Organizational structure often determines who gains visibility, sponsorship, and leadership opportunities – and who doesn’t.
Culture tells employees what is valued. Structure determines who gets access to it.
When discussions about advancing women in architecture and engineering arise, the conversation often gravitates toward culture. We talk about mentorship, inclusion, flexibility, belonging, and leadership behaviors. Those conversations are important, but they frequently overlook a more fundamental question: What if many of the challenges women experience are actually symptoms of organizational design? Meaning, have we inadvertently institutionalized the marginalization of certain folks?
During my MBA research on relationships between organizational structure and culture in design firms, I explored how organizational systems influence employee experience. The premise was simple: culture and structure are not separate concepts. Culture legitimizes structure, and structure institutionalizes culture. Over time, organizational design determines who has access to information, authority, opportunity, and influence.
Recent findings from McKinsey & Company's Women in the Workplace 2025 report offer compelling evidence that organizational design deserves greater attention. While the report documents persistent gender disparities in advancement, many of its findings point to individual shortcomings or even cultural attitudes alone, and also structural arrangements that distribute opportunities unevenly.
Viewed through the lens of Fons Trompenaars' organizational frameworks, the implications become difficult to ignore.
In my master's research, I relied heavily on the work of organizational theorist Fons Trompenaars, who proposed that organizations tend to distribute power and opportunity in four primary ways:
- Some organizations operate like a Family, where relationships and trust drive influence.
- Others resemble an Eiffel Tower, where hierarchy, titles, and formal authority determine how work gets done.
- Guided Missile organizations are built around expertise and project outcomes.
- Incubator organizations prioritize creativity and individual development.
Most architecture firms are some combination of all four. What makes Trompenaars' framework particularly useful is that it shifts the conversation from who people are to how organizations function. Each archetype creates different pathways to sponsorship, visibility, leadership, and advancement. Understanding those pathways helps explain why talented individuals can have dramatically different career experiences within the same firm.
Sponsorship is a structural outcome
One of the findings I found most striking from the McKinsey report is that women receive less sponsorship than men at every career level. Entry-level women are substantially less likely to have sponsors, multiple sponsors, or senior-level sponsors despite sponsorship being one of the strongest predictors of promotion. Women with sponsors advance at significantly higher rates than those without them.
Organizations often treat sponsorship as a leadership behavior issue. Yet sponsorship is also an organizational design issue.
For example, Trompenaars' Family culture relies heavily on personal relationships and proximity to authority. In these environments, advancement often occurs through trusted networks and informal advocacy. While these structures can foster belonging, they also create risk. When access to senior leaders depends on informal relationships, perhaps the kind solidified on golf courses, for example, sponsorship opportunities may be distributed unevenly.
Architecture and engineering firms frequently retain elements of Family culture even as they grow. Founders remain highly influential, decision-making remains centralized, and career advancement often depends on visibility with a relatively small group of leaders. Those dynamics can unintentionally favor employees who already have access to influential networks.
The question is not whether leaders intend to sponsor women. The question is whether the firm's design systematically creates sponsorship opportunities or leaves them to chance.
The broken rung begins with structure
Architecture and engineering firms often describe themselves as meritocracies. Yet Trompenaars reminds us that every organizational form has embedded assumptions about how people progress.
In Eiffel Tower cultures, advancement follows clearly defined hierarchical pathways. Promotions are tied to roles, credentials, and formal authority. In Guided Missile cultures, advancement depends on demonstrated expertise and project performance. Neither approach is inherently better. Each creates different opportunities and different barriers.
Many design firms operate as hybrids. They combine the professional expertise of a Guided Missile culture with the hierarchy of an Eiffel Tower. The challenge emerges when advancement criteria become unclear. Obviously, tension arises when firms begin overlaying organizational typologies that have different ways of manifesting advancement. Employees are expected to perform at a higher level before receiving authority, yet they cannot gain visibility without authority.
The result is a familiar paradox: talented professionals remain stuck because the pathway forward depends on opportunities they have not yet been given.
McKinsey's findings suggest that women encounter this paradox more frequently than men. The issue is not ambition. Women remain highly committed to their careers. The issue is access to the developmental experiences that make advancement possible.
Visibility matters more than we admit
Professional services firms are fundamentally relationship businesses. Yes, careers can be built through technical expertise but visibility, reputation, and trust are a factor whether we admit it or not.
McKinsey found that entry-level women are less likely to receive stretch assignments, less likely to be recommended for promotions, and less likely to be connected with influential colleagues.
These findings mirror one of the tensions identified throughout my research. Professional services firms often gravitate toward Adhocracy and Guided Missile characteristics because design work is complex and project-based. Teams form and reform constantly around project needs. Expertise becomes the currency of influence.
The strength of these systems is flexibility.
The weakness is visibility.
When project staffing, stretch opportunities, and leadership exposure occur informally, employees can experience dramatically different career trajectories despite similar capabilities. The people selected for high-profile projects gain access to leaders, clients, and future opportunities. Others may perform equally well while remaining largely invisible.
What appears to be a talent pipeline issue may actually be an awareness or organization structure issue.
Flexibility without visibility creates risk
The architecture profession continues to wrestle with hybrid work and flexible schedules. McKinsey's findings reveal a troubling pattern: women working remotely are less likely to have sponsors and less likely to be promoted than women working primarily on-site. Men experience far less difference.
This finding is often framed as flexibility stigma.
From an organizational design perspective, it is a coordination problem.
Many firms built their communication systems around physical proximity. Informal conversations, spontaneous mentorship, and project visibility historically occurred in hallways, studios, and conference rooms. When work becomes distributed but organizational systems remain dependent on physical presence, access becomes uneven.
The issue is not remote work itself. It is whether the firm's operating model intentionally recreates the relationship pathways that previously occurred by accident. How firms address those pathways in the new working environment is up to them. What matters is that it is intentional.
Designing organizations that work for everyone
Trompenaars observed that every organizational form solves some problems while creating others. There is no perfect structure.
The goal is not to design organizations specifically for women. The goal is to design organizations that distribute opportunity intentionally rather than accidentally.
That may mean formal sponsorship programs instead of relying on informal relationships. It may mean transparent advancement criteria instead of unwritten expectations. It may mean deliberate assignment of stretch opportunities, intentional mentoring networks, or clearer pathways to leadership.
Most importantly, it requires leaders to recognize that employee experience is not solely a cultural phenomenon.
Culture tells employees what is valued. Structure determines who gets access to it.
As architecture firms navigate workforce challenges, talent shortages, and leadership transitions, the conversation around women in leadership should expand beyond culture alone. The next frontier may not be changing how people behave within organizations.
It may be redesigning the organizations themselves.
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Rachel Gresham, AIA, MBA, WELL AP, CDT is senior director of Professional Practice Programs at The American Institute of Architects. Connect with her on LinkedIn. |