Escalation

Strategy Execution by Design Series

Lever 4: Governance & Decision Rights
Element 4: Escalation

Escalation reveals the truth about execution.

The last post for Lever 4: Governance & Decision Rights, is the importance of building healthy escalation into your governance system.

In strong environments, escalation is normal, early, and useful. It protects value.

It only works when decision rights are clear and escalation thresholds are explicit, equiping teams to resolve what they can and escalate what truly needs enterprise judgement.

In weaker environments, teams swing to extremes, they sit on issues until it’s urgent, or they escalate everything and call it governance. Both are expensive.

This theme came through continually in my research with senior leaders. The pain wasn’t the escalation itself; it was the pattern. Leaders either found out late or were flooded with noise, and by then the options were already limited.

Healthy escalation has one job: surface drift early enough to reset course.

Here’s the standard I use with leadership teams. When something escalates, do you get:
- facts, not feelings
- impact on value / time / risk
- options and trade-offs
- a clear recommendation
- the decision needed, and by when

If you’re not getting those inputs, escalation turns into theatre, lots of heat, not much movement.

And, if escalations don’t end in a reset, they’re just venting. Decide, re-baseline, assign ownership, then update the guardrails so the same issue doesn’t keep climbing.

Do issues reach you too late, or do they reach you too often?

For more content on how to improve your ability to execute strategy, check out: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rebecca-reti-4582433b_escalation-reveals-the-truth-about-execution-activity-7426746790332293121-PJVp?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAhmYsQBKppHDyfPTxqHXXgP5MmXRjB7WJs