The Invitation

Remember What Sustains Us

CultureROOTS helps people and organizations read workplace culture through values, behavior, and lived conditions — revealing what supports human flourishing and what needs to be restored.

CultureROOTS: Remember What Sustains Us

Most of us do not stop to ask where our workplace norms come from. We inherit ways of working, adjust to them, and eventually start calling them “culture” — even when those patterns no longer help people thrive.

CultureROOTS begins with a deeper question:

What sustains human flourishing?

That question matters because workplaces are always shaping people. They shape what people say out loud, what they keep to themselves, what they give freely, what they protect, what they stop expecting, and what they believe is possible. Culture is never neutral. It is always growing something.

CultureROOTS helps people and organizations see what is being grown — and what needs to be restored.

What Is CultureROOTS?

CultureROOTS is a culturally grounded applied psychology platform that helps people and organizations understand the values, behaviors, and conditions shaping workplace life.

It is grounded in three African wisdom traditions:

Sankofa gives the movement: return to what sustains.

Ma’at gives the structure: seven principles of right relationship.

Ubuntu gives the relational foundation: I am because we are; we are because I am.

Together, they create a framework for reading culture as a living system — one shaped by the relationship between individual desire, everyday behavior, and organizational conditions.

At the center of CultureROOTS are seven Ma’at principles:

Order. Balance. Harmony. Compassion. Reciprocity. Truth. Justice.

Each principle comes alive through two value expressions — one that brings the principle forward, and one that helps sustain it over time. Together, these fourteen value expressions form the heart of the CultureROOTS framework.

They help answer questions like:

Can people find clarity here?

Can people live sustainably here?

Can people belong without disappearing?

Are people met with care here?

Do people give and receive in kind?

Can people tell the truth here, and live in it?

Is treatment fair and rightful, even when fairness takes courage?

These are not abstract culture words. They are practical questions about how work is experienced every day.

Why It Matters

Most organizations have values. Fewer know whether those values are alive in practice.

A workplace may say it values truth, while people learn to soften what they know. It may say it values care, while people depend on individual kindness because the system itself is careless. It may say it values fairness, while opportunity still moves through proximity, favorites, and unwritten rules.

CultureROOTS makes those patterns visible without reducing them to blame.

The point is not to label people or shame organizations. The point is to understand the relationship between what people carry, how they move, and what the workplace makes possible.

That distinction matters.

People’s patterns are shaped by context as much as character. When someone stops speaking up, that may say something about confidence — and it may say something about what happened the last time truth entered the room. When a team looks disengaged, the real issue may be confusion, exhaustion, distrust, or a learned sense that nothing will change.

CultureROOTS is designed to read those signals more honestly.

The Three Lenses

CultureROOTS works through three connected lenses.

MyResonance: What people carry

MyResonance surfaces the value expressions that most call to a person before the workplace is interpreted. It asks what someone is reaching toward as a human being — what they want to honor, protect, express, or move toward.

This matters because culture work often skips desire. Organizations jump straight to action plans, initiatives, or engagement scores without asking what people are actually trying to live.

MyResonance begins there.

MyRhythm: How people move

MyRhythm looks at how people move when values meet real situations. It helps reveal where values flow freely, where they become harder to practice, and where a person may be navigating conditions that create friction with what sustains them.

This is not about judging someone’s response. It is about noticing the pattern.

A person can value courage and still go quiet in a workplace where courage has never been protected. A person can value care and still become guarded in a culture where care is one-sided. The pattern is information.

MyReality: What people are meeting

MyReality reads the workplace conditions people are actually experiencing. It looks at what is present, what is strained, and which conditions matter most to people.

This is where the framework becomes concrete. The seven principles are translated into observable conditions across organizational life — the places where values either take root or get pushed out of reach.

MyReality helps answer: what is this workplace producing in people?

The Signal Beneath the Scores

The power of CultureROOTS is in the relationship between the lenses.

A value that rises strongly in MyResonance, becomes harder to practice in MyRhythm, and meets strained conditions in MyReality tells a precise story. No single score can tell that story by itself.

That is why CultureROOTS includes synthesis layers.

MySignal brings a person’s pattern together privately, helping them see how the seven principles are showing up in their own experience.

OurSignal brings the collective pattern together across a team or organization, showing what the culture is producing across people — while protecting individual privacy.

This is where culture becomes visible as a shared pattern instead of a collection of isolated experiences.

From Insight to Action

Insight alone is not enough.

A report that names what is happening but leaves people wondering what to do next has not finished the work. CultureROOTS is designed to move from insight into responsibility, repair, and renewed practice.

That movement follows a stewardship cycle:

Remember what sustains us.

Relate values, behavior, and conditions to one another.

Restore what has become strained, distorted, or misaligned.

Regenerate the practices, skills, and conditions that help people and organizations flourish.

The action layer — MyCompass for individuals and OurCompass for collectives — helps translate the signal into direction. Sometimes the next move lives at the self level: what someone can notice, name, practice, or choose. Sometimes it lives at the relational level: a conversation, a norm, a repair, a shared practice. Sometimes it lives at the systemic level: a policy, process, resource decision, leadership behavior, or accountability structure.

CultureROOTS keeps all three in view.

Who CultureROOTS Is For

CultureROOTS is for people and organizations ready to look honestly at the relationship between values and lived experience.

It supports individuals who want language for what they are carrying, what they are navigating, and what they need in order to thrive.

It supports leaders who want to understand the difference between stated values and the conditions people actually experience.

It supports consultants, coaches, facilitators, and practitioners who need a grounded diagnostic for culture, repair, and regeneration.

It supports organizations navigating change, trust strain, retention challenges, leadership transitions, or the gap between what they say they stand for and what people live every day.

CultureROOTS is especially aligned with mission-driven organizations, public agencies, and Black-led organizations — places where values, public trust, human dignity, and accountability are central to the work itself.

The Path Forward

Culture is always growing something.

It may be growing clarity, trust, care, courage, and mutual commitment. It may be growing silence, exhaustion, confusion, guardedness, or quiet withdrawal. Either way, the pattern is there.

CultureROOTS helps people and organizations see that pattern clearly enough to act.

The question is simple:

What is your culture growing — and is it what you intend?