The Escalation Path Is a Design Decision

Every organisation has an escalation path. Most of them have never seen it, cannot describe it, and would be horrified by it if someone drew the diagram. You already have one. You simply did not design it.Here is the uncomfortable arithmetic. Problems have energy. Energy travels. If you do not give it a conduit, it will find one, and the conduit it finds will be whatever offers the least resistance and the most reaction. In practice that means problems travel toward three kinds of people. The loudest, because volume looks like competence. The most senior, because seniority looks like permission. And the most reactive, because someone who visibly panics is the only proof available that the message landed. Nobody wrote that down. Nobody approved it. It is nevertheless your operating structure, and it has been running in production for years without a single review. The org chart is a work of speculative fictionThe org chart tells you who reports to whom, which is a statement about…