At many summer camps across the country, nestled among the lost water bottles, sunscreen smears, and whiffs of bug spray, lies a persistent, quiet dysfunction—until it isn’t quiet anymore.

It begins innocently. A walkie talkie crackles to life on the hip of a counselor. It’s strapped securely to a belt or dangling from a lanyard, conveniently placed for adult use. But there’s a problem. The voice coming through—the sudden static burst of an urgent “copy?” or a garbled joke—isn’t hitting the adult’s ear first. It’s blasting directly into the ear of the six-year-old camper standing inches away. That walkie, perfectly positioned for convenience, is also perfectly positioned to rupture the relative peace of a child’s day.

This is the first symptom of what I call the Walkie Talkie Problem. And once you notice it, you can’t stop seeing it.

The Walkie Talkie Problem is not just about radios. It’s about assumptions. It’s about how systems, even the most essential ones, become frayed when they collide with human behavior, limited time, and the illusion of simplicity.

Most camps use walkie talkies. Every one of these camps, then, faces the same basic friction: there are never enough radios to go around. There’s never enough time to train people how to use them. And the people who should have them—the heavy users—hate carrying them. The ones who don’t need them love the status of holding one, at least until they realize the walkie talkie doesn’t represent power. It represents responsibility.

In the early morning, before campers arrive, there’s a ritual. A pile of walkies, freshly charged, waits to be distributed. The youngest staff reach for them like they’re holding a golden ticket. “I’ve got Admin 4,” someone might say proudly. It feels like a promotion. A rite of passage. But by lunchtime, the shine wears off. Because the walkie talkie—this clunky, buzzing, interrupting piece of plastic—is not a trophy. It’s a burden. It demands presence, urgency, and clarity. And clarity, it turns out, is a scarce resource.

There are a few different types of walkie systems. I’ve seen them all.

The first is the classic “everyone’s on Channel One” model. It’s democratic in the worst way. It invites every single person to speak, and they do—constantly. Channel One becomes a never-ending stream of directions, updates, check-ins, and, inevitably, jokes. Most of the day, it’s cluttered with noise: “Can you go to Channel 4?” “Meet me by the pool?” “What’s the lunch menu again?” There’s even a director-only channel, hard-coded and secretive, which always feels like a backroom poker game in the middle of a carnival.

Then there’s the user-specific model. This one’s built like a smartphone. Each device is assigned to a person, allowing direct private calls. But now we’re swimming in contact lists and unfamiliar names. If someone’s radio breaks and they pick up a spare, suddenly they’re invisible—uncallable. It’s precise, but fragile.

The third, and perhaps most elegant, is a hybrid. Everyone starts on Channel One, but with the press of a button, one user can pull another into a private channel. It cleans the airwaves. We tested this model and chatter dropped instantly. The silence, oddly, was louder than the noise it replaced. Suddenly, camp didn’t sound like a construction site. It sounded like a camp again.

But here’s the thing: even with better tech, the core issue remained. People didn’t know how to listen. They didn’t know how to wait. They didn’t know how to respect the channel. One enthusiastic voice could obliterate an important conversation, simply by pushing a button too soon.

And beneath all of this—beneath the tech specs, the channel structures, and the eardrum-shattering volume—was a deeper issue.

We never trained anyone.

We never trained them because we never had time. Or we thought it was intuitive. Or we assumed they’d learn by osmosis. And that assumption—that something seemingly simple didn’t require care, preparation, or attention—is the real Walkie Talkie Problem.

In fact, the Walkie Talkie Problem has very little to do with walkie talkies.

It’s the name for a specific type of blind spot in organizational systems: a tool or process that is vital to operations, yet universally misunderstood, under-trained, or misused. And everyone knows it. Everyone says, “We should really train on this next year.” And next year comes, and we don’t. Because there’s always something else. There’s always a bigger fire. And the radios? They still mostly work. Until they don’t.

The Walkie Talkie Problem exists anywhere essential systems go under-supported. It shows up in things like scheduling software, bus dismissal, sunscreen protocols, food allergy plans—anything that is obvious in theory, critical in practice, and neglected in preparation.

So here’s the question: how do we train people on the things that don’t feel like they need training—without adding time to training?

That’s the real mystery. And like most mysteries at camp, it begins with a voice coming through the static, asking if anyone can hear them.