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The three flaws Steven Burns identified in architecture firms are avoiding money conversations, neglecting the firm’s own operations, and withholding project financial information. They are useful management warning signs, but not a current prevalence study: Burns described observations from his own visits and recommendations in a 2014 sponsored article, not a representative survey.
Use the warnings as a diagnostic. If principals cannot explain fees and value, internal systems receive less attention than client-facing design, or project teams cannot see the financial information needed for decisions, the practice is carrying avoidable management risk. The remedies are straightforward: make financial discussions routine, manage business processes as deliberately as design work, and share relevant project data with the people responsible for delivering the work.
Important context: The source for these three warnings is Steven Burns’s January 23, 2014 article in Building Design + Construction. The page identifies the piece as sponsored content, with text and images supplied by the sponsor company. Burns’s claims should therefore be read as attributed observations and advice, not as independent research or proof that every architecture firm has these problems.
What are the three flaws Burns says architecture firms should address?
Burns’s three concerns are:
- Avoiding conversations about money: a culture that treats low compensation or financial discussion as somehow unprofessional can leave principals, staff and clients without a clear understanding of fees, value and business performance.
- Neglecting the firm’s own operations: accounting, marketing, human resources, project management and resource planning can be much less disciplined than the design work presented to clients.
- Withholding project financial information: employees who make day-to-day project decisions may not know the fees, costs or profitability information that would help them manage scope, staffing and risk.
None of these is automatically “fatal” in every practice. The title reflects Burns’s forceful framing. A firm should test the underlying conditions—unclear financial conversations, weak internal workflows and unusable project data—rather than assume that the article establishes how common they are today.
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How does avoiding money conversations damage an architecture firm?
A firm that cannot discuss money plainly will struggle to set expectations with clients, make informed staffing decisions and explain what professional services are worth. Burns calls the attitude of taking pride in meager compensation and avoiding financial discussions “Struggling Artist Syndrome.” That phrase is his characterization, not an industry diagnosis.
What the avoidance looks like
- Proposals describe tasks but not the value, risk reduction or expertise behind the fee.
- Principals discount work without recording what scope or staffing must be removed to preserve margin.
- Project architects learn that a job is underperforming only after invoices are overdue or hours are exhausted.
- Staff compensation, promotion criteria and workload are discussed as personal matters rather than as part of a sustainable business model.
- Owners remain the only people who know the firm’s pricing logic, so project leaders cannot make timely trade-offs.
How to make fee and value discussions normal
- Explain the fee in terms of outcomes. Connect each phase and allowance to decisions, deliverables, coordination, code and permitting work, risk management or other services the client needs. Do not promise an outcome the contract cannot control.
- Define the commercial boundaries at kickoff. State the included scope, assumptions, reimbursables, approval points and change-order process. Repeat the summary when the client requests work outside the original agreement.
- Give project leaders a live financial view. A monthly snapshot can show contracted fee, approved changes, billed amount, cost to date, remaining hours, forecast cost and forecast margin. Use the figures to decide, not to punish people for an estimate that needs revision.
- Talk with staff about how the practice works. Explain how utilization, write-offs, collections, overhead and staffing affect the firm’s ability to pay competitively and invest in training or technology. Share information appropriate to each role and protect confidential personal data.
- Separate design leadership from business administration when necessary. Burns suggests an office manager for principals who want to focus on design. The role might be an employee, a fractional administrator or an external adviser; the point is to assign ownership for billing, cash flow, people processes and operational follow-through.
Burns’s central message is direct: “If you want to get paid, you have to be able to talk about money and why your firm, its staff and its project management practices are exactly what a client needs.” Treat that sentence as his advice, not as a measured causal finding. A practical test is whether a project architect can answer three questions without waiting for a principal: What did we sell? What has changed? What decision protects the client relationship and the firm’s economics?
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How can a firm tell whether its own operations are being neglected?
Look for a mismatch between the polished experience shown to clients and the way work is actually organized internally. Burns lists accounting, marketing, human resources, project management and resource management as areas that can be neglected while design receives most of the attention.
| Warning sign | Operational question | First corrective move |
|---|---|---|
| Invoices go out late or contain repeated errors | Who owns billing, approval and collections, and what is the weekly cutoff? | Document the billing workflow and assign one accountable owner. |
| Work is won through referrals but the pipeline is unpredictable | Where are leads recorded, qualified and followed up? | Create a simple opportunity register with next actions and dates. |
| Project teams are routinely overextended | Who compares forecast workload with available skills and hours? | Review resource demand at least monthly and escalate conflicts early. |
| New hires learn processes by imitation | Are onboarding, review, promotion and feedback responsibilities written down? | Publish a short people-operations guide and name process owners. |
| Scope changes are discovered after the work is complete | How are decisions, assumptions and authorizations recorded? | Use a change log tied to fee, schedule and responsible approver. |
Why weak operations become more dangerous in a downturn
When demand is strong, inefficiencies can be hidden by incoming work. A firm may absorb rework, idle time or uncollected fees because another project fills the gap. When revenue tightens, the same waste reduces cash and leaves fewer options for retaining staff or correcting mistakes. Burns states the point bluntly: “This disorder may fly in a good economy but when times get tough inefficient management will drag your firm down.” Again, this is his warning, not a current economic model or benchmark.
A 30-day operations check
- Map the money path. Trace a project from proposal through contract, timesheet, invoice, collection and closeout. Mark every handoff and delay.
- Map the delivery path. Identify who sets scope, schedules labor, reviews quality, approves changes and communicates with the client.
- List recurring exceptions. Rework, emergency staffing, unbilled time, late approvals and duplicated data entry show where the process—not an individual—is failing.
- Choose two fixes with owners. Set a due date, a definition of done and a review date. Do not launch a broad transformation without first proving that the basic workflow can be followed.
Why should employees see project financial information?
Employees who control hours, scope, procurement, coordination and staffing need enough financial context to make responsible decisions. Burns says some firm owners withheld fees, costs and profitability data, and argues that relevant access supports better employee decisions and a more transparent relationship with clients. His claimed links to trust, repeat business and referrals are arguments, not proven causal effects in the source.
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What “transparency” should mean in practice
Transparency does not require publishing every person’s salary or giving every employee unrestricted access to bank accounts. It means giving each role the information needed to manage its responsibilities, explaining how the numbers are calculated, and allowing questions without treating them as disloyalty.
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- Project manager: labor budget by phase, consultant commitments, billing status, outstanding approvals and margin forecast.
- Resource manager: demand by skill and date, committed hours, availability and the cost of moving people between projects.
- Principals: portfolio-level cash, backlog, write-offs, receivables, risk exposure and decisions requiring client or staffing action.
Build a project-finance rhythm
- At project start: record the contracted fee, assumptions, phase budgets, billing terms and the person accountable for the forecast.
- During delivery: update time and commitments consistently. Explain variances while they are still manageable rather than waiting for a final loss.
- At a regular review: compare plan, actuals and forecast. Ask what changed, who can act, and whether the client needs a scope or fee conversation.
- At closeout: document final fee, cost, write-offs, lessons and unresolved receivables. Feed those lessons into future proposals and staffing plans.
Burns summarizes his position this way: “For a project to go well there needs to be total transparency—for employees and clients.” A firm can adopt the principle while still applying role-based permissions, privacy rules and professional judgment. The test is practical: can the person closest to a risk see it early enough to act, and does the client receive a clear explanation of approved scope and changes?
What evidence supports the “three fatal flaws” claim?
The article supplies an individual account, not a representative evidence base. Burns wrote that he sold a Chicago architecture firm with 17 people and then spent two years visiting nearly 200 architecture firms around the country, staying one to five days in each office. The page does not report a sampling method, response rates, regional breakdown, firm-size distribution or a comparison group. Those visits therefore cannot establish how widespread the three conditions are.
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His biography on the page also reports average earnings growth of 24% per year over 14 years for his former firm. That is a biographical claim about one business, not a sector statistic or an independently verified benchmark. The sponsored-content disclosure matters: the article’s framing and recommendations should be attributed to Burns and the sponsoring context rather than presented as neutral research.
The advice can still be useful in 2026 as a set of questions. Use it to inspect your own fee conversations, workflows and information practices; do not use it to claim that most firms are failing or that any particular intervention guarantees higher profit, retention or referrals.
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What should an architecture firm do first?
Start with the project that is active enough to reveal problems but controlled enough to review safely. A short, documented cycle is more useful than a sweeping policy statement.
- Choose one pilot project. Include the principal, project manager, project architect and whoever handles billing or resource planning.
- Write down the commercial facts. Capture fee, scope, approved changes, hours, cost commitments, invoices and outstanding decisions.
- Hold a no-blame review. Ask where information was missing, where an approval stalled and which decision would have been different with earlier visibility.
- Repair one client conversation. If scope or effort has changed, prepare a factual explanation of the change, its effect and the choices available to the client.
- Assign process ownership. Put one name beside billing, forecasting, resource review, change control and staff communication.
- Repeat monthly, then standardize. Keep the measures that lead to decisions; remove reports that nobody uses.
What pitfalls can undermine the fixes?
- Sharing numbers without definitions: A margin figure is misleading if staff do not know whether it includes overhead, consultant costs, write-offs or unbilled time. Publish a brief glossary.
- Using transparency as surveillance: Data should trigger support and decisions, not automatic blame for every variance.
- Making promises before checking capacity: Fee discussions must be paired with a realistic staffing and schedule plan.
- Adding software before fixing ownership: A new system cannot resolve unclear approvals, inconsistent time entry or missing scope decisions.
- Assuming a good market will hide defects forever: Use strong periods to improve collections, documentation and training before conditions tighten.
How should principals interpret these warnings today?
Interpret them as a management checklist, not a verdict on the profession. Burns’s 2014 observations highlight three connected failure modes: money becomes taboo, internal operations become secondary to design, and the people making project decisions lack financial context. Addressing all three gives a firm a clearer line from promise to delivery to payment.
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The most defensible takeaway is modest but actionable: discuss fees and value directly, give operations the same deliberate attention as design, and provide relevant project financial information to the people who can use it. Measure whether those changes improve clarity, speed and decision quality inside your own practice; the source does not provide evidence that they produce a guaranteed outcome across the industry.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Frequently Asked Questions
How often should an architecture firm review project finances?
A monthly review is a practical starting rhythm because it can expose scope, staffing and billing variances while there is still time to act. High-risk projects or projects with rapidly changing scope may need more frequent checkpoints, while a quiet closeout can require less discussion.
Should every employee see the firm’s complete profit-and-loss statement?
Not necessarily. Share the fee, cost, schedule and forecast information that a person needs for the decisions they own, while restricting personal compensation, banking details and other confidential data. Explain the definitions and access rules so limited visibility is not mistaken for secrecy.
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What should a firm say when a client challenges its fee?
Return to the agreed scope, assumptions, deliverables and staffing rather than defending a number in isolation. Show which requested outcome or risk requires additional effort, then offer clearly described options such as changing scope, schedule or fee.
Is a 2014 article still useful for architecture firms in 2026?
Yes, as a prompt for an internal audit of conversations, workflows and information access. It should not be used as current evidence of how common these flaws are, because the article reports Burns’s visits and opinions without a representative sample or current industry benchmark.
