The Hidden Force Sabotaging Your Program- System Blindness in Afterschool and Summer Camp Settings
How many times have you blamed the “they?”
It was the third staff meeting in a row where Program Director Shawn found himself confused by the negative reaction of his staff. “We have all these amazing activities planned, solid pay, and a beautiful facility – why are they quitting all the time? They just can’t hack it” Meanwhile, across the room, first-year group leader Zack was thinking “If they make me fill out one more completely pointless form while managing 15 eleven-year-olds, I’m done. I’m so over it.”
Both Shawn and Zach are disgruntled, but neither was seeing the complete picture. Each blamed the “they” of the organization – someone or some other group – that was intentionally causing their headaches. Instead, they were experiencing a profound phenomena called “system blindness.”
Organizational theorist Barry Oshry theorized that many organizational challenges aren’t caused by individual failure but instead by system blindness: the inability to see how one’s position shapes their perspective in an organization (or system) and how different parts of the organization impact each other. In youth-based organizations where relationships are everything (it’s the whole business!) such blindness can be dehabilitating and common. In the next few blogs we’ll dive deep into each type of blindness. In this blog we’ll give a general overview of what it is, some of its costs, how to identify it, and how to begin to address it.
How System Blindness Manifests in Youth Programs
How many times have you experienced issues like this?
Directors not seeing the day-to-day reality of frontline staff ("they just don’t work hard enough”)
Frontline staff not understanding administrative pressures (“they’re just always in their office”)
Program Coordinators feeling caught between competing priorities (“My Director has unreasonable demands and these frontline staff just don’t get it. I’m all alone here!”
These are all examples of system blindness, and there are 5 types of system blindness:
Spatial Blindness
Temporal Blindness
Relational Blindness
Process Blindness
Uncertainty Blindness
Moving forward we’ll use the term system to describe organizations and all their complexity. Under each type of blindness we’ll present an example.
Spatial Blindness
Each staff member only sees their part of the system but not the whole. While each might understand their immediate environment they don’t see what’s happening elsewhere in the system. They don’t recognize how different parts of the system impact each other, leading to misunderstandings, stereotypes, and taking things personally when they shouldn’t. Our opening anecdote was an example of spatial blindness.
Scenario: Camp director implements new activity schedules without consulting frontline staff
How Spatial Blindness Shows Up: The director cannot see the implementation realities that are visible to frontline staff and frontline staff cannot see the administrative pressures driving the schedule changes
Outcome: Staff frustration, poorly executed activities, camper confusion
Cost: Diminished program quality, increased staff turnover
Temporal Blindness
This happens when the staff of an organization see the present without understanding the past and how it all got to where it is now. Without seeing the story and history that created the conditions they are in, they misdiagnose situations and apply ineffective solutions or “reinventing the wheel.” This can be especially tricky if there are a lot of relatively new staff and a few “old guard” who have seen changes throughout the years.
Scenario: New program implementation that works on paper but fails in practice
How Temporal Blindness Shows Up: Not understanding the history of previous implementation attempts or the context of why certain approaches haven't worked in the past
Outcome: Inconsistent implementation, frustration on all sides
Cost: Wasted resources, missed developmental opportunities for youth
Relational Blindness
Staff fail to recognize that they exist in systemic relationships with others. There are predictable patterns that feel so personal and unique to each organization when in fact they are found everywhere, like the tension that can occur between leadership and frontline staff or family and provider. Staff fail to see the relationship dynamics and fall into unproductive patterns, such as leadership feeling overburdened and frontline staff feeling oppressed.
Scenario: Afterschool program where staff feel overwhelmed while supervisors feel staff aren't taking enough initiative
How Relational Blindness Shows Up: Both parties fail to see the responsibility dance they're engaged in—supervisors pulling responsibility up to themselves while staff pass it upward
Outcome: Mutual resentment, disengagement
Cost: Reduced program innovation, staff attrition
Process Blindness
This form of blindness happens when staff don’t see their systems as whole systems interacting with their environments and other systems. Staff miss how the system differentiates, individuates, and coalesces and responds to environmental pressure. This often leads to turf warfare among leadership, middle management feeling alienated from each other, and frontline staff falling into group think.
Scenario: Disconnect between what administrators promise and what frontline staff can deliver
How Process Blindness Shows Up: Failure to see how different parts of the system (marketing, administration, frontline implementation) need to work together in an integrated process
Outcome: Family dissatisfaction, staff feeling unfairly judged
Cost: Decreased enrollment, poor reputation
Uncertainty Blindness
In this final form of system blindness, we see fixed positions battling other fixed positions without recognizing the fundamental uncertainties underlying those positions. We don’t like uncertainty so we turn rigid, rejecting complexity and turning to simplified positions about how to manage our responsibilities, vulnerabilities, and relationships with each other. This often looks like boiling down a complex debate into a single rigid position (or a few) that prevents staff from partnering to create a nuanced solution to a problem.
Scenario: An afterschool program where staff divide into opposing camps—"traditionalists" defending established activities versus "innovators" pushing for complete program redesign
How Uncertainty Blindness Shows Up: Both sides convert uncertainty about program evolution into rigid positions rather than collaborating on a mixed approach
Outcome: Polarized staff meetings, stalled decision-making, implementation of ineffective compromise solutions
Cost: Program stagnation, continued enrollment decline, staff division affecting youth experience
You can probably think of many examples from your own experinces. Often all these painful disconnects happen not because anyone is bad at their jobs but because we’re all experiencing some of this blindness. That’s not to say that there is never anyone bad at their jobs – it’s to instead say that we’re quick to blame the individual for their lack of abilty. Acknowleding systems blindness is believing that generally everyone is doing their best with what they can see from where they stand.
So before you get frustrated with the “them” (whoever your “them” might be), take a beat. The first step to clearer vision is asking a few, better questions. Think of these diagnostic questions as prescription glasses your program has been needing – helping each role see beyond their own corner of the program and into each other’s realities.
Diagnostic questions for Program Leaders
Let’s break down what each position needs to see more clearly.
For Executive Directors/Camp Directors/Top Leadership
Do you regularly observe programs without an administrative agenda?
Can you describe in detail what a typical day looks like for your frontline staff?
How often do you create opportunities for staff to share their experiences?
Do you know what your staff find most challenging about their daily work?
For Program Coordinators/Middle Management
How effectively are you translating between administrative requirements and frontline realities?
Do you feel caught between competing priorities? How do you manage this?
Are you serving as a buffer or a bridge between leadership and frontline staff?
Do you have mechanisms to share critical information in both directions?
For Frontline Staff
Do you understand the "why" behind program requirements?
How do you communicate implementation challenges to leadership?
Are you taking ownership of program outcomes or primarily focusing on daily tasks>
Do you see yourself as responsible for organizational success?
For All Levels
When was the last time you experienced the program from another position's perspective?
How often do you have structured conversations across levels about program experiences?
What do you think other positions don't understand about your role?
These questions aren’t just conversation starters – they’re system sight builders. You start to see results when everyone stops assuming they know what others experience and start getting curious instead. You need to create spaces where these conversations can happen! Enter the TOOT…
The TOOT Solution: Creating “Time Out Of Time”
To be honest, the name could use some work but the concept is pretty profound. To move from system blindness to system sight, organizations need to carve out time to talk about the system itself. That means creating structured time when normal operations pause and staff reflect together on their ways of working with each other. This is time out of your regular program time, stepping aside from the day-to-day. This could look like a yearly retreat, quarterly half-day meetings, or weekly touchpoints. If you run a seasonal program, this could mean a session before and after (pre/post) the season. The important thing is that they are routinized in some way.
You might already be thinking about how such a session might go off the rails. If folks have low trust with each other, you might need to start small. This could look a few different ways:
Have an outside person (consultant or someone else) facilitate conversations so leadership can actively participate in them
Start in small functional groups before mixing up cross-functional groups (such as group leaders in one group, leadership in another)
Discuss system blindness as a concept before self-diagnosing. When I ran a program this was one of the training sessions I taught staff at the beginning of the summer.
Assess your norms and community agreements (if you have them). Do folks still buy in to them? Or do you need to rewrite them?
A well-run session can be profound. A session plagued by blame, defensiveness, and a lack of psychological safety can be damaging. While daunting, it can have profound benefits for your organization.
The Benefits of System Sight for your Organization
We all want organizations to just run better. When you tackled your system blindness your program can experience tangible improvements across multiple dimensions that affect both your bottom line and your mission fulfillment.
Impact on Staff Retention
Your staff work incredible hard and need to feel seen and understood. When organizations regularly open conversations about the ways folks work together, the transformation is remarkable. When staff feel understood rather than judged, they stay. It’s that simple. When staff believe leadership sees their challenges rather than just their performance, they develop loyalty. When frontline staff understand the constraints their leadership face, they shift from resentment to partnership. A happy staff means a happy program.
Impact on Program Innovation & Quality
System sight doesn’t just solve your problems – it unleashes creativity that would otherwise be trapped in silos. Programs that restructure their development to include frontline implementors from the beginning transform traditional top-down approaches into interactive processes where leadership provides the framework while front line staff contribute implementation wisdom. When everyone sees the whole system solutions emerge from unexpected places. These innovations can only surface when we break down the barriers between positions and create genuine partnerships.
Impact on Family & Community Relationships
Families and community partners don’t’ experience your organization chart – they experience your collective presence. They just want the system to work, and system sight on your team creates coherence that builds trust and strengthens external relationships. You present a united front to the world. Families feel confident their concerns will be addressed rather than lost in translation between levels. Community partners find its easier to collaborate because your communication is clear and consistent.
Concluding Thoughts
Thinking in systems, and in particular finding the hidden systems, has been a transformative concept for me in my career. System blindness is everywhere and is the hidden force keeping too many programs running at a fraction of their potential. It’s the reason well-intentioned leadership feels frustrated by staff who “just don’t get it,” dedicated frontline staff burn out feeling unappreciated, and coordinators in the middle end up torn between competing demands. Had Shawn and Zach had a grounding in system blindness, they might have been more willing to enter into partnership.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
By implementing regular Times out of Time, asking the questions mentioned above, and committing to understanding each other’s worlds, you can transform your program’s culture and outcomes. In the future we’ll explore each of the types of blindness in detail, so be sure to check out future blog posts!
Ready to see your system more clearly? Here are three immediate next steps you can take:
For Directors: Schedule 30 minutes this week to observe your program with no agenda other than understanding what your staff experience daily.
For Coordinators: Create a simple, anonymous survey asking both your directors and frontline staff what they believe is most misunderstood about their roles.
For Frontline Staff: Invite a program leader to join you during a typical activity and share with them both the joys and challenges of implementation.
We’re here to help you through this. We can coach you through the steps, plan your retreat, and so much more. Feel free to reach out to us with your questions and follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest! We’ll be able to help you solve your problems.
Interested in working with us? Sign up for a free 30-minute call to assess your systems and see how we can help.
