In any bottoms-up organization, it’s common to see an escalation as a failure state: an inability for individual team members to come to a consensus on their view of which direction to pursue, despite having seemingly complete agency on their execution. Usually, this feeling is a function of cognitive disonnance that emerges from having to reconcile opposing ideas from multiple parties because they want to maintain their agency, even though they might be missing necessary inputs that can only be provided elsewhere (and usually at a higher leadership vantage point). The solution is of course to escalate sooner when different individuals, disciplines or teams disagree with the approach, rather than wait for the inputs you need to magically appear.
But even for teams that recognize the value of escalations done well, the term carries the connotation of unnecessary physical and emotional overhead, which often makes it a tool employes as a last resort. This is usually because one or both of two things happening:
- Teams that need to escalate do so with incomplete and incoherent inputs.
- Leaders that need to drive decisions do so through debate rather than dialectic.
