This is the Referral Rundown, the newsletter that helps camps grow through word of mouth.

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Today’s estimated read time: 1 minute 37 seconds

Every camp director has experienced it.

A counselor has an incredible summer.

The campers love them, the staff love them.

You start imagining where they'll fit into camp next year.

Then, sometime in the fall, you get the email.

They're not coming back.

And it stings.

Not just because you're losing a good staff member.

Because you're losing one of your best staff members.

It's tempting to look for a single reason.

Pay. College. Internships. Relationships.

And sometimes those are the reason.

But I think something else is often happening.

The best staff members are usually ambitious.

They're curious.

They want responsibility.

They want to learn and grow.

Those are the exact traits that made them great counselors in the first place.

Sometimes we unintentionally create a system where growth stops.

A staff member crushes it as a counselor.

So we ask them to do the exact same thing next summer.

And the summer after that.

And eventually they start looking elsewhere.

Not because they don't love camp.

Because they're looking for a new challenge.

One of the hardest parts of leadership is realizing that retention isn't always the goal.

Development is.

If camp helps someone become more confident, more capable, and more ambitious...

We shouldn't be shocked when they go do ambitious things.

That's actually evidence that camp worked.

Now, that doesn't mean we should shrug when great people leave.

It does mean we should ask a different question.

Not:

But:

Can they mentor younger staff?

Can they run a program?

Can they own a project?

Growth doesn't always require a promotion.

Sometimes it just requires trust.

The camps that invest most heavily in staff development often retain people longer.

Not because they trap them.

Because people stay where they feel challenged and appreciated.

And when they eventually leave, they leave grateful.

Not stagnant.

The best staff members don't leave due to a weakness.

They leave because they're your strongest.

They want to grow.

The real challenge isn't preventing their leaving.

It's creating a place where growth can happen for as long as they're with you.

📚 The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt

This is one of those business books that gets recommended over and over again.

The core idea is simple:

Every system has a bottleneck.

And improving things outside the bottleneck doesn't improve the system much at all.

It’s useful lens for camp directors:

Sometimes the problem isn't enrollment. Or staffing. Or facilities.

It's figuring out where the actual constraint is.

Until next time,

Peter “Campfire Cadet” Elbaum