Issues with silos in architecture and engineering firms

Literally every firm I do strategy work with says collaboration is a core value. But when I pull back the curtain, all too often I discover anything but teamwork. Instead, it’s welcome to the land of silos, turf wars, and “I’ve-got-mine” cultures.

So, what’s really happening? Why are so many AE firms waving the collaboration flag while their teams are quietly building walls between themselves, hoarding resources, and avoiding genuine teamwork like it’s politics at the in-laws’ dinner table? Let’s take a look:

The anatomy of silos—what do they look like?

Silos in AE firms can take many forms, but they’re all toxic. Here are just a handful:

• Department silos: The architects are doing their thing, the structural engineers are off in their corner, and neither knows—nor cares—what the mechanical/electrical group is up to. Ever tried getting departments to turn “your work” and “my work” into “our work”? Good luck. It’s like asking Bill Belichick and Tom Brady to co-author a book.

• Office silos: If your firm has multiple offices that act like silos, you might as well be running completely separate companies. Each office operates independently, with no incentive to share best practices or, heaven forbid, clients or client opportunities.

• Market silos: When market silos exist inside a firm, asking one sector to help out another isn’t even an option. And the market sector leaders? They guard their client lists like state secrets.

• Generational silos: In firms with generational silos, the younger staff are usually described as “unwilling to work hard” or “entitled” by older employees, while those older employees are seen as “stubborn” or “resistant to change.” Instead of recognizing the strengths each generation brings, these stereotypes fuel mistrust and prevent true collaboration. The older team might see the younger employees’ flexible approach as a lack of discipline or engagement, while the younger staff view the veterans’ adherence to old-school values as unnecessary rigidity. Both groups retreat into their corners, convinced that the other just doesn’t “get it.”

How silos hurt

So, what’s the big deal, right? Just let everyone stay in their lane, do their thing, and the firm will hum along smoothly. Well, that’s just flat-out wrong.

Here’s how silos can quietly (and sometimes not-so-quietly) dismantle the potential of your firm:

• Wasted time and redundancy: Instead of pooling resources, siloed teams waste time solving the same problems over and over. How many hours have been burned by multiple teams reinventing the same wheel? No one’s talking and no one’s listening, so no one knows.

• Missed opportunities: That project your commercial team nailed could have been a killer portfolio piece to help your health care team win its next big contract. Too bad they never even heard about it.

• Unhealthy competition: Rather than a firm-wide mentality of “we all win together,” silos create a hyper-competitive atmosphere where each department or office is focused on beating the other, sometimes even at the expense of the firm’s greater success.

• Damaged client experience: When silos reign, clients are left navigating your fragmented firm where no one seems to communicate. Good luck getting an integrated, seamless experience when each team has different goals.

• Lowered morale and engagement: Silos create a sense of isolation and competition, which can lead to frustration and resentment among employees. When teams feel disconnected from the broader mission or isolated from their peers, morale drops, and engagement follows, leading to higher turnover and burnout. No one wants to feel like they’re working in a vacuum or on an “inferior team.”

Why silos develop in the first place

Silos don’t appear out of thin air. They’re cultivated by various forces, often unintentionally, but damaging all the same.

Here’s why:

• Leadership blind spots: Leaders love to champion collaboration, but if they’re not actively tearing down walls and encouraging cross-discipline teamwork, they’re just managing silos. And most don’t even know they’re doing it.

• Incentive structures: When teams are incentivized to hit individual targets (and not firm-wide goals), you’re creating a breeding ground for silos. It’s a classic case of “me first” vs. “us first.”

• Lack of communication systems: No proper channels for regular, cross-team communication? Get ready for information hoarding and mistrust. If there’s no mechanism to share knowledge, you’ve given teams permission to keep it to themselves.

• Fear: Teams sometimes retreat into their silos because of fear—fear of looking incompetent, fear of being criticized, or fear of stepping on someone else’s toes. Staying isolated feels “safer” than taking risks and collaborating.

Tearing down the walls—what you can do

Enough with the collaboration slogans and well-meaning, but ultimately toothless, public service announcements like, “We’ve just got to do a better job at [fill-in-the-blank].”

You need real actions to bulldoze silos.

• Incentivize cross-discipline wins: Want collaboration? Celebrate and appreciate it. Create incentives where departments, markets, or offices win only when they work together. Bonuses, promotions, or even public recognition should come when teams share knowledge, co-pitch projects, or combine their strengths.

• Break down geographical and disciplinary barriers: Regular cross-office meetings, joint project teams, and firm-wide forums can break down those “us vs. them” attitudes. Instead of regional isolation, make every office feel like an extension of the whole.

• Create cross-market task forces: Put teams from different markets together and give them a shared problem to solve. Get health care folks working with education, commercial with residential. It forces people out of their silos and sparks ideas that could never happen in isolation.

• Encourage radical transparency: Make information flow freely—across offices, disciplines, and markets. Create systems that make knowledge-sharing easy, whether it’s an internal app or regular company-wide presentations.

• Model collaborative behavior: Walk the talk. If you are seen collaborating with others, inviting input across teams, and openly sharing information, it sets the tone for the rest of the firm.

So, how do you tear down silos? If you just hesitated, chances are you’ve got some walls to demolish.

Original content can be found at www.morrisseygoodale.com.

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