“Asa Nisi Masa” is a mysterious, childlike incantation that appears in 8½, Federico Fellini’s semi-autobiographical 1963 film, which has been said to have changed the collective memory of Italy and is considered one of the greatest and most influential films of all time.

In this avant-garde comedy-drama, which explores a director’s creative block, memory, fantasy, and identity, children chant “Asa Nisi Masa” as if it were a magical spell meant to make the eyes of a painted portrait move. On the surface, it sounds like nonsense, and that is intentional.

“Asa Nisi Masa” may be a coded name for anima, the Latin word for soul, created through a children’s word game in which extra syllables are playfully inserted.

It evokes the lost language of childhood and the tension between adult rationality and childlike wonder, quietly conveying the idea that creativity comes from reconnecting with one’s inner world, not from mastering technique alone. The expression “Asa Nisi Masa” is not meant to be understood intellectually, but to be felt as the fragile in-between space where imagination, memory, and creativity originate, neither adult control nor childish regression. It is the space where imagination becomes possible.

Within this playful threshold where meaning emerges lies a space that our executive consulting and coaching practice dares to revisit and explore with our clients.

We do not provide the spell; we help create the conditions in which something not yet nameable can emerge, attention without intrusion, structure without rigidity, seriousness with playfulness.

Like the children chanting “Asa Nisi Masa,” it’s less a matter of trying to solve a problem, and more about finding the courage to explore the unknown and the unthought known, to re-access meaning, to experiment again for the first time, and to learn.

When organizational leadership loses its “Asa Nisi Masa,” focusing solely on what can be measured, valuing performance pressure everywhere and for everything, and fearing experimentation if it does not promise secure results, imagination is logically treated as a distraction rather than a vital resource.

Without it, organizational robustness erodes and risks fracturing.

To remain confident, steady and grounded while allowing transformation to unfold, let us remember that creativity does not come from optimization, innovation does not come from control, and transformation does not come from urgency. More often than not, they emerge from deliberate actions and from the capacity to hold a space long enough for something new to appear and to be welcomed.

This is why, as organizational consultants, we cannot confine ourselves to a single method or repertoire. Doing so would mean losing access to that liminal, playful, imaginal space where Fellini’s chant resonates, “Asa Nisi Masa,” inviting us to sing along and sparking the beginning of something yet unseen.

(Photo: Party in Casablanca, 2024)