torus Ecosystems of Change

For foundations, NGOs, cultural institutions and the funders who support them.

Your organization is running on borrowed time. We help it govern its own.

Meet less, decide with meaning and presence, and keep your people, in a moment when AI is setting the pace for everyone.

Book a 30 minute clarity callFind your way in

People walking on a city street, each looking at a phone

From where you are to where you want to be

Your team stops running on someone else's clock and sets its own pace, through things you keep, not one more conversation.

Now: borrowed time

  • Funders, reports and the pace of AI decide the strategy.
  • Decisions wait for a meeting, and the meeting ends without one.
  • The people who care the most are the most tired.

Then: a rhythm of your own

  • Fewer meetings, and decisions made with presence.
  • People who still have the energy to care.
  • A team that sets the pace of its own AI decisions.

Chronos is the clock others set for you. Kairós is the moment you can read and act on. That is where this work happens and we can help.

Five sentences, a free first look

Which one sounds like you?

Choose the sentence you have said, or heard, most this month. We tell you who we hear, then what fits. No email, no form.

Nothing chosen yet. There is no wrong answer.

Ways in

Choose the result you need most. Each way in tells you what you leave with, and by when.

Each way in turns the circle of the year: a quarter for ninety days, the whole year for a partnership.

01Start here

Threshold Reading

Three key decisions in four weeks

Four weeks

What we hear

“We feel the pace and cannot say whose clock we are living on.”

Where it goes

Three decisions your leadership will act on.

What you get3

  • Interviews with your team
  • A threshold session with your leadership
  • A written reading
More detail
What changes
  • A shared language for what is happening to your time.
  • Three decisions your leadership agrees to act on.
  • A clear view of whether a longer partnership makes sense, before you commit to one.

We measure together. Decisions recorded per hour of meeting, recurring meeting hours, and days from raised to decided on your three biggest open questions.

What we ask of you. One coordinator, access to the people we interview, and your leadership in the session.

How it begins

A 30 minute call to see if this fits. If it does, you receive a written proposal with scope, dates and price.

02First rhythm

90 Day Transition Strategy

A meeting ritual and a decision ritual in 90 days

Three months

What we hear

“Decisions wait for a meeting, and the meeting ends without one.”

Where it goes

A first rhythm in use: a new meeting rule, a new decision rule and your own written strategy.

What you get3

  • A monthly session with your leadership
  • Support in between
  • The strategy your team writes and keeps
More detail
What changes
  • A meeting rule and a decision rule your team actually uses.
  • A Transition Strategy written by your own people.
  • A first quarter of practice, with someone beside you.

We measure together. The same numbers at day 90, against where you started.

What we ask of you. Your leadership at the monthly sessions, and one person who owns the rules in daily practice.

How it begins

A 30 minute call to see if this fits. If it does, you receive a written proposal with scope, dates and price.

03The core

Annual partnership

A year of governing your own time

Twelve months

What we hear

“Our calendar is set by funders, reports and an AI race nobody chose.”

Where it goes

A team that governs its own time, and an archive of what it learned.

What you get5

  • Four movements, one per quarter
  • A monthly leadership session
  • A quarterly team gathering
  • A keynote for your community
  • The Transition Guide and the Transmission Archive
More detail
What changes
  • A team that governs its own time.
  • Four quarters of change, each built on the one before.
  • An archive of what you learned, so it stays when people leave.

We measure together. The same numbers every quarter, and an archive that stays when people leave.

What we ask of you. A leadership sponsor, the quarterly team gathering in your calendar, and one person who keeps the archive with us.

How it begins

A 30 minute call to see if this fits. If it does, you receive a written proposal with scope, dates and price.

04One event

Keynote

One talk, one question

One event, a question that stays

What we hear

“We have an audience, and we want people to leave with a question, not a speed.”

Where it goes

A shared question everyone carries out the door.

What you get3

  • A talk for your event
  • A threshold question to continue with
  • Your theme or one of ours
More detail
What changes
  • Everyone leaves with one shared question.
  • A new way to speak about time in your community.
  • A question to continue with after the event is over.
How it begins

Tell us about the event: date, audience and theme. We reply with a written proposal with scope and price.

Want to hear from someone who has been through it? Ask for a reference conversation

Ways in for leaders, founders and people in transition. See the path for you

For the thinking behind the work: seven ideas and the Shelf of thirteen books. See the ideas

When to begin

DecMarJunSep

Partnerships begin on the solstices and equinoxes, four doors a year. New institutional partnerships are open for 2027.

Next door: . The point that moves is today.

For funders and institutes

If you support organizations, the Threshold Reading can be delivered to a cohort of your grantees: one contract, several houses, delivered with a team, priced by program and usually below a stand alone Reading for each organization.

Talk about a cohort

Questions

Questions before you write.

How do I know which way in is mine?

Choose the sentence in Ways in that sounds like you, or take the five sentence test above. Most organizations begin with the Threshold Reading. Still unsure? Book a 30 minute clarity call.

What does it cost?

The price depends on the scope, so it comes in a written proposal after a 30 minute call, in euros and without VAT. For Latin America it can also come in reais.

What happens after I write?

We listen and tell you honestly whether Torus fits. If it does, you receive a written proposal. If not, we say so.

We have no budget yet. What can we do?

Start with the Letters, free every two weeks, or tell us your situation in a clarity call.

Seen at

Malmö, Lisbon, Rio, Amsterdam. The same invitation, with different audiences: to read your own time before someone else sets it.

The Conference, Malmö, 2024.
Future Days, Lisbon 2024
Everything is Temporal
The Conference, Malmö 2024
MozFest House, Amsterdam 2024
What Design Can Do Live, Amsterdam 2024
Facilitation
Casa Firjan, Rio de Janeiro 2023
Festival Futuros Possíveis
KES Summit, Trancoso 2023
Talk
TEDxRio 2020
Talk, online
Fractal 2016 to 2025
Protagonists of the times, with Perestroika

Watch

On Our Relationship With Time A six minute excerpt from a keynote on time, identity and decision making.

Clients and partners

  • Unilever
  • Rede Globo
  • Banco do Brasil
  • Santander
  • Nubank
  • Grendene
  • University of Jena
  • Time Machine Europe
  • Governo do Espírito Santo
  • Instituto Toriba
  • Instituto Afrofuturo
  • Unearthodox
  • AIxDESIGN
  • Manos Visibles
  • Odd Studio
  • Das Pretas
  • Perestroika
  • FLAGCX

Keynotes and events

Thirteen years of work on time, in Rio, Amsterdam, Lisbon and Malmö. See the work

In their words

What changed for the people who worked with us.

  • ★★★★★

    Two worlds, two clocks, one place to start.

    “Startups and heritage institutions spoke different languages and kept different clocks. In two years, the Heritage Innovation Lab gave both sides a place to start.”

    Project manager at a museum

  • ★★★★★

    Learning without taking knowledge from those who keep it.

    “The question was how AI learns from Indigenous and Afrodiasporic ways of knowing without taking the knowledge from the people who keep it. The research did not stay on the page: it went into the classroom.”

    Researcher in design and AI

  • ★★★★★

    New lenses for my own work.

    “We built experiments, talked about time, technology and the more than human, and rethought how we act inside our own projects, not only in theory. I left with new lenses for my work.”

    Innovator in a nature and futures project

  • ★★★★★

    From ideas to artifacts with their own rhythm.

    “Before, we had ideas. After the five sessions, we had structured artifacts that help us build our own rhythms, and the shared space became the model for our ongoing course.”

    Fellow at a philanthropy institute

  • ★★★★★

    New lenses for my own work.

    “We built experiments, talked about time, technology and the more than human, and rethought how we act inside our own projects, not only in theory. I left with new lenses for my work.”

    Innovator in a nature and futures project

  • ★★★★★

    From ideas to artifacts with their own rhythm.

    “Before, we had ideas. After the five sessions, we had structured artifacts that help us build our own rhythms, and the shared space became the model for our ongoing course.”

    Fellow at a philanthropy institute

  • ★★★★★

    Two worlds, two clocks, one place to start.

    “Startups and heritage institutions spoke different languages and kept different clocks. In two years, the Heritage Innovation Lab gave both sides a place to start.”

    Project manager at a museum

  • ★★★★★

    Learning without taking knowledge from those who keep it.

    “The question was how AI learns from Indigenous and Afrodiasporic ways of knowing without taking the knowledge from the people who keep it. The research did not stay on the page: it went into the classroom.”

    Researcher in design and AI

An invitation

Find out whose clock your organization is living on.

If your work lives on horizons longer than a quarter, let us read this threshold together. The first conversation is to see what fits.

Book a 30 minute clarity callor write to us below

After you write
  1. We listen, and tell you honestly whether Torus fits.
  2. If it fits, you receive a written proposal with scope, dates and price.
  3. If not, we say so.

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Letters

One letter every two weeks, to think about time with us.

Free, in your inbox. A short essay from Gust on how people and organizations live their time.

Subscribe to the Letters, free

Read past letters

LETTERS

Time now

· ·Barcelona ·Belém

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