Percept was a transdisciplinary advisory firm driven by curiosity and heart. We sunsetted in September 2024.

Percept’s
sunset

Percept intentionally sunsetted on 30 September 2024, after seven years of operation. Through the relationships and repertoire of work it seeded, Percept continues to live on as an ancestor, informing new pathways to a healthier, more equitable, and more resilient world.

We have chosen to collate this repository of knowledge and tools, understanding that what is to come can grow freely from this rich matter.

View our work

“All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you.”

Octavia E. Butler

More about us

We were rooted in South Africa, but collaborated with a translocal network of clients and partners to tackle the knotty strategic, policy and technical problems that arise out of complex systems.

Our dynamic team transgressed knowledge silos, drawing on theory and methods from actuarial science, history, anthropology, clinical medicine, sociology, and public health (amongst others).

Our story

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To collaboratively cultivate a healthier, more equitable, and more resilient world.

Read Percept’s Emergent Positioning in full here

Vision statement

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To collaboratively cultivate a healthier, more equitable, and more resilient world.

Read Percept’s Emergent Positioning in full here

Vision statement

Our values live on through our people

Transdisciplinary collaboration

Through the cultivation of trust relationships, inclusive ways of working, and the courage to transgress sectoral and disciplinary boundaries, Percept leveraged powerful collaboration for outsized impact.

Right effort

We moved with clarity of purpose, channelling our energy and resources in the best service of the work. We worked with intentionality both within each project, and in our high-impact portfolio of work.

Generative curiosity

Guided by pointed, persistent, and creative questions, Percept built alternative new ways to imagine and tackle complex problems.

Everyday courage

Percept’s vision for a healthier, more equitable, and more resilient world was mirrored in the ways that we worked. Our (counter)culture looked to demonstrate that kindness and excellence can be mutually constitutive, rather than coming at one another’s expense.

Big milestones

Years in operation

Countries that we have done work in

Disciplines that the Percept staff has consisted of

Areas of work that we have been involved in

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Percept clients

FAQs

Why did Percept sunset?

Percept underwent many transitions in its seven years. Being comfortable with change and adaptation helped us stay responsive to our curiosities, to the knotty questions of our time and context, and to the ever-changing needs of our people and partners. The pace and scale of transition in its last two years were especially intense. This had given rise to multifactorial challenges: some of our major long-term projects were winding down; our capacity and skill-set had shifted along with changes in the lives and choices of some of our key people; and the financial pressures on many of our clients had been deepening. Percept was reaching the end of a lifecycle. Sustaining Percept under these conditions would require making compromises in the work that we did, and how we did it, which could have changed the essence and integrity of Percept, which has always been the draw, both for Percept’s people as well as our clients and partners.

We had learnt from our work in palliative care that, sometimes, fighting against a necessary or inevitable ending can rob people of the opportunity to end well. Surviving at all costs is not always a marker of resilience: it can also be a sign of stubborn rigidity. Instead, we chose to collectively steward an integrous ending for an organisation, and an ethos, we cherish. And to leave traces that would allow Percept’s purpose, values and spirit to be carried forward in new forms.

How did Percept approach its sunset?

Through its work, and its ways of working, Percept had always aspired (however imperfectly) to model the type of world it wished to see. That was also true in our sunset, which we held with intention and care, deliberately leaving seeds and traces for the next generation of collaborators and thinkers. Some of these seeds and traces are reflected here on this website, which we intend to keep alive as a repository of Percept’s work, our ways of working, and the tools for thinking we have co-developed over the years.

Our sunset also included intentional efforts to collectively equip Perceptors for the next phase of their lives and careers. Percept’s people are the spores through which our work towards a healthier, more equitable and more resilient world will be germinated again, over and over. These efforts included collective sharing of skills, network and tools, using our social media presence to showcase Percept’s people, and collaboratively dreaming and preparing for new futures.

“Everything dies, but that’s kind of good. It makes for a very rich world. All the richness, all that fecundity, all that beautiful miracle of life; it happens because we live in cycles, not perpetuity.” – Adrienne Maree Brown.

How will Percept’s work live on?

The ending of Percept, as an organisation, was not by any means the end of what we had collectively instigated over our seven-year journey together. Our people, and our work, carries forward Percept’s values of transdisciplinary collaboration, right effort, generative curiosity, and everyday courage. Already, Percept’s work and people have contributed to seeding new organisations: Alignd, Zazen, circanow. We ended this cycle knowing that it was possible to have a culture of work that is rooted in both compassion and excellence, and that puts relationships at the centre. We sunsetted knowing what is possible when individuals, seen for all their multitudes, come together to tackle sticky problems with curiosity, rigour, and heart.

This website acts as an archive of Percept’s work. Here, you can find Percept’s published work, records of our organisational strategy, toolkits on organisational culture, and a range of other material.

To read reflections from our people and our partners on Percept’s sunset, and the new horizons called in by Percept’s work, visit Reflections at sunset.