We see it in every business and community. The items that don't get completed our minds eventually make invisible. This leads to often embarrassing issues that are obvious to potential residents on tours. So first to the reasons for operational blindness, some of the major causes include the following.
- New employees become blind to issues because they assume there was a reason older employees didn't take care of the issue.
- The employee has seen the issue over and over again but has not been able to get the issue fixed. To keep sane they hide the issue from their conscious self.
- fear of blame. They are afraid that showing their awareness of the issue will lead to blame for not getting the issue fixed earlier.
Now to the solutions. The important concept is to give staff the message that pointing out a current issue that needs to be resolved will never be seen as a negative. Finding and improving the system should be awarded and when doing so the result should never be punishment.