How To Escalate an Issue at Work? Include These 4 Components
An effective escalation requires more than just marking to seniors
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Many years ago, I recall being invited to a meeting at work.
It was called by the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) of the bank, and had the COO (Chief Operating Officer), senior VPs, my boss’s boss, and me.
During the meeting, the CTO asked everyone about their IT-related issues that were yet to be addressed.
I was surprised.
I was just a manager then. Even my boss was not invited to the meeting.
Later, I realized it was because of the Escalation emails I sent from time to time on different issues.
They had an intensity that my (then) small 25-member team’s issues were tracked at the CTO level.
To Escalate today has become synonymous with marking to seniors — your and your counterpart’s boss.
In the absence of any thought in drafting the email — apart from merely marking to seniors — just 1 issue results in 10s of email going up and down the chain before something meaningful is achieved.
