Can organisations have blind spots?

What does it look like for an organisation to have a blind spot? How is it different from a person having one?

How would we know when we are in one?

When a person has a blind spot, the individual can be busy, and yet unable to see that the mode of operating has gone astray. More importantly, when an outsider tries to explain what is missing, it has little impact. The person may hear the words but misunderstand them, or absorb the advice through reinterpretation.

Organisations, too, have blind spots. But because they are made of many individuals, the manifestation is different.

First, there are almost always people—often many—who can sense that something is wrong. It appears as fragmentation, recurring problems, and frustration that leadership “does not get it”. So unlike the individual case, where the person may not see there is anything wrong at all, an organisation registers incoherence without being able to identify a clear cause.

Second, organisations are rarely short of contact with reality—audits, escalation points, and investment in data capability. Unlike an individual, who can persist for years without hearing a contrary voice, an organisation is continuously confronted with signals of failure. But like the individual, those signals are reinterpreted rather than allowed to revise the decisions that underpin the root cause.

Third, organisations do not remain passive in the face of contrary signals. Many initiate restructures, cultural programs, and technology modernisation. The problem is that these activities lead to marginal improvements on surface issues without restoring coherence.

So, the first difference is the knowledge that the direction is off. The second is contact with reality. The third is the attempt to course correct. In the individual, these may be absent. In the organisation, they may exist—and be abundant—and yet the end result is the same.

We saw this pattern in concrete form in the tragic case of the Grenfell Tower Fires.

From as early as 2012 to 2016, residents repeatedly raised concerns about fire safety, electrical hazards, and the broader condition of the building. The Grenfell Action Group documented warnings, including the risk of a catastrophic fire. Complaints were made about refurbishment decisions, including the installation of cladding and insulation. There were inspections, reports, and interactions with authorities. Each could be treated as local, limited, or manageable. None became decisive.

And yet the signals accumulated.

Until the devastating day of 14 June 2017, when a fire broke out and spread rapidly through the building, resulting in the loss of 72 lives.

This is not an organisation that had no contact with reality. It is one in which reality was present in fragments, repeatedly, and yet structurally unable to become decisive action.

A person with a blind spot may simply not see.
An organisation often does see, in fragments, across many people, dashboards, escalations, reviews, complaints, and advisors. But what it cannot do is gather these into an operative recognition that changes direction.

So organisations do have blind spots. But their blindness is not a simple absence of awareness. It is a structural condition in which signals of failure do not correct because they could not be understood.

This means that a blind spot is more than a mere weakness. A weakness is when a problem is understood but the organisation is unable to execute a solution. A blind spot is when the problem itself cannot be understood—adding more data or capability does not help. The organisation “sees” but does not “see”.

A precise definition would be:

An organisational blind spot exists when persistent signals of failure are structurally absorbed in ways that prevent them from becoming decisive corrective action.

So the next question is:

“Why do they occur?”

and then

“What can we do about it?”