The 4 steps approach to an effective escalation process
The guide to pre-empting escalations for people managers and teams
It’s the last working day of the week, around 5pm.
Just as you are ready to wrap up for the day a message comes in: “Check your inbox”.
In your inbox an email thread with a different communication exchange you were added on. It requires your immediate attention, understanding the context and history, and getting this into a resolution path.
Sounds familiar? You might want to tune in for the rest of this article.
I’ll share a set of X tips and best practices to keep an eye on potential escalations as they emerge and keep your weekend worry free (as possible).
What is an escalation?
In the corporate world, we work with other individuals and teams. There are shared commitments and expectations among stakeholders and management.
However every now and then things break, quite literally (technical issues in the product) or in the commitments made or relationships (delay in a project or a friction between team members or stakeholders).
Raising it with the direct management, skip level management or other stakeholders’ management is the act of escalation. It is done in order to unblock, consult and bring to a resolution faster.
Effective escalation 101
It’s important to state escalations are needed and should be welcomed by management, when done properly. Different managing-up and down processes (as well as status reports) can be put in place to address and prevent unwanted surprises.
Step 1: Information gathering and assessment
Documentation: Create a brief including the timeframe, impacted customers, teams or segments, potential impact if not addressed, solutions (prior and future).
Issue <Title>
Timeframe: <When this issue started, for how long>
People: <Lead, stakeholders, and teams>
Impact: <Impacted customers, potential impact if not addressed>
Background: <Brief background of the situation, what was tried so far>
Alternative solutions / next steps: <What actions are taken already? Who should be involved?>
Ask: <What decision or action is required from management>
Communicate: Depending on the criticality and urgency of the situation use the right channel — leadership chat (internal), bi-weekly meeting, or in your 1:1 with your direct manager.
Step 2: Who should you escalate to?
Escalation to be made in a recursive traverse tree order (each time one level up), try to avoid directly reaching out to escalation point in a different organization.
In the corporate world it is common to keep symmetry in place in regards to the escalation path — e.g. if the escalation has been made or involved a skip-level manager of another team or customer stakeholder, make sure to involve the same level of escalation for your organization.
Step 3: Resolution / Progress updates
Define Engagement: Based on the next steps (as agreed in the brief shared above), establish the relevant engagement model and artifacts to be updated by relevant stakeholders and shared with management.
Cadence: Depending on criticality and while the issue still persists. Also to include follow-ups in the relevant bi-weekly status calls.
Closure: If the issue is resolved, make sure to communicate the resolution and learnings.
Final and 4th Step: Learnings and Retrospective
Albert Einstein once quoted saying:
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”
In order to avoid the next escalation or issue on this matter, perform a post-mortem and think: What are the set of steps or guardrails that can be put in place that would’ve helped in this matter?
Can similar incidents be avoided? Should anything be changed in the escalation process and handling itself?
Capture those and the next time around would be handled even smoother.
Best of luck!
