So there probably were some things during that time the team could change, even if it was out of pure pragmatism (i.e., "well, raising this issue led to a bunch

So there probably were some things during that time the team could change, even if it was out of pure pragmatism (i.e., "well, raising this issue led to a bunch of busy work. Let's not raise that kind of issue any more"). But even if not, there certainly was benefit just agreeing "yeah, this is a problem we can't address", since that builds a stronger team. That said, the situation you describe gets solved by the org adopting a retro itself. The team lead raises the broader issues up at a retro with other stakeholders/higher level management/etc, who -can- fix it.