Editing Openai/6932ecc5-e634-8011-b64a-a4afcb30497a (section)

==== AFRICA ====

===== 1. Ubuntu – “I am because we are” (Southern Africa) =====

Core idea
A person’s identity and wellbeing are formed through relationships with others. Personhood is fundamentally relational, not individual.

FOW connections
* Performance & metrics – Shift from “star performer” to relational performance: who builds capability, reduces friction, mentors, and strengthens trust networks.
* Org design – Teams measured not just by outputs but by the quality of interdependence: psychological safety, mutual accountability, shared learning.
* Workplace design – Layouts that treat collaboration spaces as civic infrastructure (places to care for each other and the work), not just amenities: visible commons, shared rituals, social thresholds rather than isolated “me + my laptop” islands. This aligns with the idea that social comfort, wayfinding, and restoration are universal human needs across building types.

===== 2. Harambee – “All pull together” (Kenya) =====

Core idea
Community mobilizes around a shared purpose—everyone contributes what they can to a common goal (fund-raising, building, solving a problem).

FOW connections
* Change management – Instead of top-down change rollouts, treat major transformations (new HQ, new hybrid model, new tools) as Harambee events, where people actively co-create the new system.
* Work models – Project structures that normalize short, intense, cross-functional “pull together” sprints, with visible start/finish, communal celebration, and clear impact.
* Spatial expression – Highly adaptable “rally spaces” where teams can assemble, post goals, track visible progress, and then disband—like digital war rooms made physical.

===== 3. Sankofa – “Go back and fetch it” (Ghana / Akan) =====

Core idea
Progress requires returning to the past to retrieve what is valuable and unfinished—memory as an active resource, not nostalgia.

FOW connections
* Learning & AI – Instead of treating knowledge as disposable project dust, build “Sankofa loops”: formal rhythms where teams revisit old decisions/data to inform new cycles, especially as AI systems amplify historical bias.
* Governance – Institutionalize retrospective spaces (physical and temporal) where past experiments are unpacked and fed into strategy—retros as civic ritual, not just agile ceremony.
* Workplace typologies – “Archives of practice” inside offices: walls, digital canvases, or galleries that show the history of how the organization learns, not just brand slogans.

===== 4. Indaba / Palaver Tree – Consensus under the tree (Southern & West Africa) =====

Core idea
Community gathers—often literally under a tree—to talk, listen, and reach consensus. The process is slow, dialogic, and inclusive.

FOW connections
* Decision-making – Hybrid models that combine fast, small-team decisions with periodic, slow, whole-system “indaba” sessions for big questions: purpose, ethics, AI use, major workplace changes.
* Leadership – Leaders as facilitators of shared understanding, not just deciders. A skillset: holding open, multi-voiced spaces until clarity emerges.
* Spatial design – Intentional “indaba zones”: circular seating, eye-level arrangements, no head-of-table; rooms optimised for listening and layered voices, not presentations.