Steven Burns Says Firms Need to Rethink Project Management

Steven Burns sold his Chicago office in 2007 to focus on a design problem in the way firms work.

By Career Ahead AI · United States — AI-assisted, fact-verified against cited sources. Readers should verify key facts.

Burns connects design training to how firms operate

Burns’s route into architecture began with sculpture: he studied as a sculpture major at Syracuse University. He later worked abroad as an architect for SOM, then returned to the United States and opened a small office in Chicago. Those steps link creative training and practice inside a firm with the experience of running one. The business question he turned to was how design firms are structured and managed, rather than how to solve a design brief for a single client.^¹²

Burns says his view of firm operations comes from years spent working with the software side of the business. He has spoken with over three thousand firm owners and been on-site in over two hundred firms. That experience gives his argument a practical focus: the way work is assigned and managed shapes whether a firm can deliver projects. He frames project leadership as a role with responsibility for the whole project, rather than a narrow job of tracking tasks.^¹

The shift changes the job’s emphasis: the leader must consider how the work functions as a whole, rather than treating management as a sequence of administrative checks.¹

He treats each project as a small business

Burns rejects the label “project manager.” He says project managers are not actually project managers, and argues that firms should stop using the term. His alternative is to see the person leading a project as the chief executive of a small business, with the project itself as that business. The shift changes the job’s emphasis: the leader must consider how the work functions as a whole, rather than treating management as a sequence of administrative checks.^¹

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The business framing also explains Burns’s test for whether a firm can keep serving clients. He says that without a successful business, a firm cannot have a sustainable business or the ability to serve its clients. In this view, client service depends on the organisation behind the design work: a project needs to operate successfully for the firm to sustain its work. Architects from Ghana, El Salvador and Indonesia tuned in to the live event where this argument was discussed.^¹²

Other design problems begin with confusing systems

A separate example comes from an entrepreneur who studied architecture and built a real estate technology company. When they entered the real estate industry in New York, apartment hunters were frustrated by confusing listings and overly polished photos. Their response was to show real, unedited video tours so people could understand a space before spending time visiting it. The example follows the same practical logic: identify the point where a system fails its users, then change what the business presents or does.^³

The entrepreneur says this lesson has also appeared in their family’s urban development work in Mexico. The example widens the focus from a single product or project to the structure around it. Katrina’s definition of a business design problem is more specific: it is a structure that keeps requiring the owner to show up for things that should not require them. Her article was published on Mar 24, 2026.^¹²³

Katrina also distinguishes dependence on the owner from a team-performance issue. A team that needs a lot from its leader, she says, has a clarity and empowerment problem. That diagnosis points to the operating conditions around the team: people need enough clarity to understand what they are responsible for, and enough authority to act. Paired with Burns’s project-as-business model, the principle is to make responsibility visible and give the person leading the work a role broad enough to manage it.^¹²

Rethink Your Role as a Project CEO

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If you lead projects, stop treating the role as a checklist of tasks. The ledger shows that a project leader functions as the CEO of a small business, responsible for the whole project's success, not just tracking work. When you negotiate a job title or a promotion, ask for authority over the full project scope, not a narrow administrative position. This shift changes how you frame your value: you are not a manager of tasks but the owner of a business outcome, which strengthens your case for higher pay and broader decision-making power.^¹

The entrepreneur says this lesson has also appeared in their family’s urban development work in Mexico.

For those building teams or hiring, the ledger points to a specific failure mode: a team that needs constant leader input has a clarity and empowerment problem, not a performance issue. Before blaming individuals, check whether people have enough clarity about their responsibilities and enough authority to act. This applies whether you run a design firm or a real estate technology company, as the same logic appeared in both contexts. Build systems that do not require you to show up for routine matters, so your time goes to decisions only you can make.^²³