Fees
An investment rather than an expense
Support comes at a cost. Changing nothing has a cost too, often higher and less visible. Here is what you need to compare the two before deciding.
These figures come from published studies and surveys. They give orders of magnitude, not a promise of results for your organisation.
What you are paying today
The cost of a team under strain appears on no invoice. It is paid in absences, departures and decisions that go nowhere.
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CHF 6.5 billion
a year: productivity losses linked to work stress in Switzerland. More than 30% of working people say they are emotionally exhausted.
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12 billion days
of work lost every year worldwide to depression and anxiety, nearly US$1 trillion in productivity.
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20% of employees engaged
worldwide in 2025. Low engagement is estimated to have cost about US$10 trillion, or 9% of global GDP.
Transformations that miss their target
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65 to 80%
of company projects fail, according to the studies gathered by consulting engineer René Rupert.
René Rupert
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2 out of 3
transformation programmes fall short of their objectives, according to a Booz & Company survey cited by Curt Blattner.
These rates come mostly from consulting firms. Research calls for caution: no solid empirical study sets a precise failure rate (Hughes, 2011). Surveys still converge: a large share of transformations miss their objectives, and each failure costs the investment and the teams' time.
Technology projects and digital transformation
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70%
of digital transformations fall short of their objectives, according to a survey of 825 senior executives.
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+45% over budget
on average for large IT projects, which deliver 56% less value than predicted (more than 5,400 projects).
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1 project in 6
goes so far off track that it overruns its budget by about 200% and its schedule by almost 70% (1,471 IT projects).
In Switzerland, the Federal Tax Administration's INSIEME IT project was abandoned in 2012 after about ten years. Parliamentary committees found shortcomings in management and oversight, and poorly defined responsibilities (Swiss Parliament, 2014, in French).
Artificial intelligence projects
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More than 80%
of AI projects fail, by some estimates, twice the rate of other IT projects.
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95% of organisations
get no measurable return from their generative AI projects, although companies have invested US$30 to 40 billion in them.
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Cause no. 1: a misunderstanding
between leadership and technical teams about the problem to solve. It is the leading cause of failure identified in 65 interviews with AI specialists.
In both studies, technology is not the first culprit: what is missing is a well-defined, shared problem, and an organisation that learns to build the tool into its work.
When concerns do not travel up: the human cost
As René Rupert points out, a project's failure can also be counted in human lives. In 1986, the Challenger shuttle broke apart shortly after launch and its seven astronauts died. The commission of inquiry found a serious flaw in the decision-making process: the engineers' doubts about the seals in cold weather were not conveyed as such to the managers who approved the launch (Rogers Commission, 1986).
This is what hierarchical dialogue works on: making sure what teams know reaches those who decide.
Consulting that creates dependency
When the know-how stays with the provider, each new challenge calls for a new assignment. Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington show how this repeated reliance weakens the capabilities of businesses and governments (The Big Con, 2023). In Switzerland, the federal government spent CHF 673 million in 2024 on external services and consultants (Blick, 2026, in French).
My approach aims for the opposite: the methods are published under free licences, and each assignment ends with pointers to carry on without me.
What you can gain
Reported gains vary widely from one study to another. Together, they outline a range, from modest to very high.
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+23% profitability
for the most engaged teams compared with the least engaged, with 78% less absenteeism and 70% more thriving employees (183,806 teams, 90 countries).
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5 to 1
Average return of workplace mental health measures in the United Kingdom: £5 back for every £1 invested.
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Results × 3
At Nescafé, Curt Blattner applied the Three Contracts of emerging change with 250, then 500 people. He estimates that his unit's results were multiplied by three.
Successes in figures
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108 hours instead of 168
of care per client per year at Buurtzorg in the Netherlands, where self-governing teams of 10 to 12 nurses provide home care. Overheads of 8% instead of 25%, sick leave and turnover half the average. Total cost per client stays close to average, however, once medical care is included.
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From 75% to 98%
of households connected to water and sanitation in Porto Alegre between 1988 and 1997, thanks to participatory budgeting; the number of schools quadrupled. Across Brazil, participatory budgeting is associated with a sharper fall in infant mortality.
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US$8.8 trillion
The value of open source software to the firms that use it, that is, what it would cost them to build it themselves.
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€65 to 95 billion
impact on the European Union's GDP from about €1 billion invested in open source in 2018. A 10% increase in contributions would add 0.4 to 0.6% of GDP a year.
Closing the autonomy gap
René Rupert sets the useful level of autonomy according to the complexity of each activity, then compares it with the autonomy people perceive and the autonomy they want. The gaps show where to act: where control holds people back, and where freedom lacks bearings. I mapped these gaps with the team at Fujitsu (report, 2013, in French) and with 84 teachers at the Lausanne Hospitality School (EHL).
Gains are not automatic. A meta-analysis finds medical costs fall by about US$3.27 and absenteeism costs by about US$2.73 for every dollar spent on workplace wellness programmes (Baicker et al., 2010). But a randomised trial found no effect of a standard programme on health, spending or job performance after 18 months (Song and Baicker, 2019). That is why I start from the team's situation and from what it decides for itself, rather than from a ready-made programme.
What I invested to know where to strike the hammer
The story is well known: an expert bills for one hammer strike, one franc for striking, the rest for knowing where to strike. Here is what that knowledge cost me.
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CHF 623,200
Full cost of my education at 2026 prices: CHF 188,300 in fees and CHF 434,900 publicly funded. Including living costs during my studies, CHF 874,600.
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17 years of study
full time, spread over 26 years (1997-2023) and alternating with fieldwork: 8 degrees and diplomas, 5 certifications and more than 2,000 hours of continuing education.
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As much as a surgeon
With the same method, a surgeon's training costs about the same (≈ CHF 626,000); a lawyer's or an organisational development consultant's, about a third less.
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CHF 2.2 million
of collective value created with more than 1,000 volunteers, about three and a half times the cost of my education. On top of this, CHF 420,000 raised for research.
Not counted: salary forgone during my studies and 870 hours of training in “hostile” environments. Method: public reference costs (Federal Statistical Office, SERI, cantons) and published course prices; details on request.
How much to budget
What independents with a comparable background charge
| Profession | Hourly rate | Training cost |
|---|---|---|
| Lawyer, canton of Vaud | 300–500 | ≈ 65% |
| Senior organisational development consultant | 140–250 | ≈ 69% |
| Medical specialist, consultation (TARDOC) | ≈ 210 | ≈ 100% |
| Fabio Balli, for institutions and companies | 200–260 | 100% |
Sources: juriup.ch for lawyers, Magic Heidi for consultants, TARDOC point value of about CHF 0.90. Values preceded by ≈ are estimates.
What I recommend you budget
This table is not a price list. It shows the amount to budget for working with me, depending on your type of organisation. The final amount depends on the duration, the number of people and the deliverables: we set it together during the 20-minute call.
| Service | Institutions and companies | Associations | Citizen collectives |
|---|---|---|---|
| Individual support, per hour | 200–260 | 140–160 | 100–120 depending on income |
| Training, per classroom hour, preparation included | 180–300 | 120–150 | 100 |
| Day of design, preparation or research | 1,600–1,800 | 1,000–1,100 | 400–600 |
| Day of leadership team support | 1,800–2,200 | 1,000–1,300 | 400–700 |
| Day of large-group facilitation | 2,000–2,400 | 1,200–1,400 | 500–800 |
- A reasonable amount of preparation and follow-up time is included. For citizen collectives, third-party funding may be possible: we can discuss it during the 20-minute call.
The methods I develop are published under free licences. Assignments are paid according to a differentiated scale, for three kinds of clients. I also give priority to projects that can produce freely shareable resources, where it makes sense.
- Working languages
- Bilingual in French and English; German and Italian for simple individual sessions only.
- Locations
- Depending on the contract, available to travel internationally; free to work in Switzerland, the European Union and Canada. Visa facilitation in some Commonwealth countries.
Sources
These figures come from published studies and surveys. They give orders of magnitude, not a promise of results for your organisation.
- Health Promotion Switzerland, Job Stress Index 2022
- World Health Organization, Mental health at work (fact sheet)
- Gallup, State of the Global Workplace, 2026
- Gallup, Q12 Meta-Analysis, 11th edition, 2024
- Boston Consulting Group, Flipping the Odds of Digital Transformation Success, 2020
- Hughes, M. (2011). Do 70 per cent of all organizational change initiatives really fail? Journal of Change Management, 11(4), 451-464
- Blattner, C. (2020). The Heartbeat of Excellence. LID Publishing
- Mazzucato, M. and Collington, R. (2023). The Big Con. Penguin
- Blick, external consultants of the Swiss federal government, 19 January 2026 (in French)
- Bloch, M., Blumberg, S. and Laartz, J. (2012). Delivering large-scale IT projects on time, on budget, and on value. McKinsey and University of Oxford
- Flyvbjerg, B. and Budzier, A. (2011). Why your IT project may be riskier than you think. Harvard Business Review
- Ryseff, J., De Bruhl, B. and Newberry, S. (2024). The Root Causes of Failure for Artificial Intelligence Projects and How They Can Succeed. RAND Corporation
- MIT, Project NANDA (2025). The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025 (summary by Virtualization Review)
- Finance and Control Committees, investigation report on INSIEME, 2014 (in French)
- Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident (Rogers Commission), chapter V, 1986
- Gray, B., Sarnak, D. and Burgers, J. (2015). Home care by self-governing nursing teams: the Netherlands' Buurtzorg model. Commonwealth Fund
- SDG16+, Participatory budgeting in Brazil (based on Abers et al., WRI, 2018)
- Touchton, M. and Wampler, B. (2020). Public engagement for public health. Development in Practice, 30(5), 681-686
- Hoffmann, M., Nagle, F. and Zhou, Y. (2024). The Value of Open Source Software. Harvard Business School, working paper 24-038
- European Commission, study on the impact of open source software on the European economy, 2021
- Deloitte UK, Mental health and employers, 2020
- Baicker, K., Cutler, D. and Song, Z. (2010). Workplace wellness programs can generate savings. Health Affairs, 29(2), 304-311
- Song, Z. and Baicker, K. (2019). Randomised trial of a workplace wellness programme, JAMA (summary by Harvard Medical School)
- Balli, F. (2013). Performance durable en entreprises : co-construire dans l'autonomie (Fujitsu, in French)
- juriup.ch, lawyers' hourly rates in Switzerland (in French)
- Magic Heidi, hourly rates of freelancers in Switzerland
- SERI, reference costs of universities 2021-2024 (in French)
Considering working together?
Briefly describe your situation. I will reply to see whether my approach can help.