Escalation
The agreed route by which a problem reaches someone able to decide — written in advance, so nobody has to invent it mid-crisis.
Category
Operations
Also known as
- escalation path
- exception handling
An escalation is the defined route by which a problem moves from the person who found it to the person who can resolve it: who is told, in what timeframe, and what they are authorised to do. It exists because the alternative is that everyone improvises a route during the worst hour of the month.
The absence of one is expensive in a specific way. Without a stated path, staff hold problems too long — not from carelessness but because raising something has an unclear cost and looks like an admission. A written path removes the judgement call. "Anything that will make us miss a deadline goes to me the same day" makes raising it the expected behaviour rather than a confession, which is the whole point.
It needs three things to work: a trigger that is a fact and not a feeling, a named person rather than a role nobody occupies, and a stated response time. It also needs the person receiving it to react well the first time; one bad reaction teaches an entire team not to use it.
Worked example
A supplier misses a delivery on day 2. Under an unwritten culture it surfaces on day 9, when the client notices, and costs the relationship. Under a same-day rule it surfaces on day 2, the client is told before they ask, and the deadline moves by agreement rather than by apology.
Relevant for
- Business owners
- Staff sit on problems because raising one has an unclear cost — write the trigger down, and react well the first time it is used, or the rule dies in a week.