Risk Experts / Owning

The escalation that does not happen

People escalate what will be received well.

Escalation is designed as a threshold mechanism and operates as a social one. A manager decides whether to raise something based partly on the criteria and largely on what happened the last time somebody raised something similar. If that produced scrutiny of the manager rather than of the risk, the threshold has been effectively raised regardless of what the framework says.

This is why organisations are frequently surprised by exposures that were widely known several levels down. The information existed and the channel did not carry it, and no amount of reiterating the escalation criteria changes that.

The observable indicator is the volume and direction of escalations over time. A steady flow, including items that turn out not to matter, suggests a working channel. A channel that only carries confirmed problems is carrying them too late.

The fix is mostly about what happens to the escalator. Being thanked for raising something that turned out to be nothing is the specific experience that keeps the channel open, and it has to happen visibly and more than once.

It is also worth watching what happens to escalated items. A channel that carries information upward and returns nothing teaches the same lesson as one that punishes the escalator, more slowly. Telling somebody what was decided about the thing they raised, even when the decision was to accept it, is what maintains the flow.