Most of what is written about Àṣà in English is wrong. Not maliciously — usually it is wrong because Àṣà resists translation, because the concept does not match neatly onto Western categories, because the writers are working with a sentence-long summary instead of a tradition. Three Ways to Misunderstand Àṣà? This essay is one attempt at a more careful answer.
What Àṣà Actually Means
Translators usually settle on something like: Àṣà is a Yoruba word for tradition, custom, or culture — but with a particular emphasis. Unlike a Western reading of 'tradition' as fixed inheritance, àṣà names tradition as practice — the continuous, adaptive doing of what has been found to work. It includes language, ritual, food, dress, courtesy, and the unspoken protocols of community life. It is the answer to the question: what do we keep doing, even as everything changes? It is a defensible translation. But translation is the surface. Àṣà carries underneath it a set of assumptions — about what a person is, what owes what to whom, and what success even means — that the English sentence cannot deliver.
Customs are the spice of life.Yoruba
The Question This Post Is About
The most common mistakes outsiders make about Àṣà, and how to avoid them. The question is worth taking seriously, because Àṣà is one of those concepts that loses its shape when handled carelessly — and recovers it as soon as the reader is willing to slow down and listen.
There is a specific application of Àṣà that managers rediscover every few years and act surprised to find: the practice of asking, before any consequential decision, who has not yet been heard from. The question seems procedural. It is not. It is a small Àṣà act, repeated, that changes the temperature of an organisation over years. Team rituals are not abolished when they become inconvenient — they are revisited and renewed.
A Second Angle
There is a specific application of Àṣà that managers rediscover every few years and act surprised to find: the practice of asking, before any consequential decision, who has not yet been heard from. The question seems procedural. It is not. It is a small Àṣà act, repeated, that changes the temperature of an organisation over years. Team rituals are not abolished when they become inconvenient — they are revisited and renewed.
Where the Concept Resists
There is also the question of authority. Who gets to speak for Àṣà? The traditions in which it lives are old, plural, sometimes in disagreement with each other. Anyone — including the writer of this essay — who claims a definitive reading is overreaching. The careful reader treats every restatement of Àṣà, including this one, as one voice among many.
What to Do With This
If you are new to Àṣà, the most useful place to start is not with a study or a course but with a question, asked of yourself, at the end of an ordinary day: who held me up today, and whom did I hold? Sit with the answer. Do not improve it yet. The concept will deepen on its own, repeated, over weeks. This is how Àṣà actually enters a life.