In many organizations the only way to get things done is an escalation.
Welcome to Lead Prompt // executing leadership from the root. I’m your host, John Collins.
Today, we’re talking about the "Escalation Anti-Pattern": why it happens, why we’re all addicted to it, and how to stop the cycle before your best people burn out.
The Invisible Workflow
In many organizations, there is the "official" process which is the one documented in the employee handbook or the fancy JIRA workflow, and then there is the actual process. In far too many companies, those two things never meet. Instead, they rely on a shadow system that governs how resources are actually moved and how decisions are actually made.
In these environments, the only way to get things done is an escalation.
The "Shooting from the Hip" Mirage
At the beginning of my career, over 25 years ago, I was fortunate enough to work with a seasoned consultant on a complex workflow engine. I was the young developer, head down in the code, trying to build the perfect logic. He was the senior statesman, brought in to advise the C-suite on business process optimization.
I remember him joking with me during a lunch break about his discovery sessions with leadership. He said they would often lean in and say, with a mix of pride and desperation: “we are very good at shooting from the hip. How do we do that more effectively?”
It took me a few years to realize what they were actually saying. They weren't asking for agility; they were admitting they had no real processes in place. Or, more accurately, whatever processes they did have were being largely ignored in favour of ad hoc reactions. They mistook "chaos" for "speed."
When you "shoot from the hip," you aren't aiming at a target; you’re just making noise and hoping something hits. But in leadership, when "shooting from the hip" becomes the culture, the "escalation" becomes the only way to point the gun.
The Hero Culture: Starting Fires to Put Them Out
Later in my career, I had another mentor who was an engineering director at a software vendor. We were building customer-facing web apps for massive telecom companies. It was a high-pressure, high-stakes environment where things went wrong constantly.
He used to tell me, “John, we are so good at putting out fires around here, we often start them just so we can put them out.”
He was highlighting a dangerous psychological trap: The Hero Culture. When an organization operates by escalation, it rewards the "fire fighters." The person who stays up until 3:00 AM to fix a production outage gets the "shout-out" on the Friday All-Hands call. The manager who screams the loudest to get a feature shipped at the last minute is seen as "driven" and "high-performing."
But what about the engineer who designed the system so it didn't break? What about the Project Manager who saw the resource gap three months ago and quietly adjusted the scope? They are invisible. When you reward the fire, you shouldn't be surprised when the building keeps burning.
The Dark Art of the Escalation
Throughout my career, I’ve seen this anti-pattern repeat. It’s a world where nothing moves until there is an emergency, either real or manufactured.
Product Managers and Project Managers are often the masters of this. Many have built entire careers around the "dark art" of the escalation. They know that if they ask for a resource through the proper channels, the answer is "no." But if they wait until the project is "Red" and the client is screaming, suddenly the budget appears.
I’ll be honest: I have dabbled in this dark art myself. I’ve been in positions where I knew I needed to hire more people, but the financial approval was stuck in a loop of "wait and see." I’ve had to let a fire start, letting a deadline slip or a system strain, before I was finally given the "fire fighters" I needed. It’s a soul-crushing way to lead.
The Case of "Fireman Sam"
One of the most telling examples of this toll was a brilliant principal engineer I worked with. He was the "fixer." If a problem was truly impossible, it went to him. Naturally, every manager in the company tried to escalate their issues directly to his desk, bypassing every roadmap and priority list we had.
He got so fed up with being the "human escalation point" that he changed his Slack avatar to Fireman Sam, the children’s TV character.
His morning routine became a grim ritual: log in, coffee in hand, and look at his mentions to see which "fires" he was expected to extinguish today. He stopped being an architect; he became a glorified sprinkler system.
This is where the "Escalation as a Process" truly fails. While "shooting from the hip" can feel like an adrenaline rush in the moment, that rush is followed by a massive energy crash. You cannot run a marathon on adrenaline. People will quit. Your best talent, the ones who actually want to build things rather than just fix things, will be the first to leave.
The Toxic Blame Game
When escalation becomes the default, it inevitably leads to a toxic culture of finger-pointing.
I’ve worked in environments where you log in each morning and your first task is to check which escalation thread you’ve been CC’d on. These threads are rarely about solving the problem; they are about defensive documentation.
- "As per my previous email…"
- "We haven't received the requirements from Team B…"
- "This was escalated three weeks ago and no action was taken..."
The goal shifts from "How do we ship value?" to "How do I make sure this isn't my fault?" When the process is the escalation, the primary output of the team isn't software or service, it’s blame.
Breaking the Cycle: The Leader’s Mandate
So, as leaders, how do we break this? How do we move back to a world where an escalation is the exception, not the rule?
Here are three strategies to help.
1. Build Trust, Not Just Tickets
Ideally, you should aim to prevent the escalation from happening by building inter-team relationships based on trust. If I trust that you are working on the highest priority items, I don't feel the need to "escalate" to jump the queue. High-trust organizations have fewer escalations because they have shared alignment.
2. Identify the "Pre-Escalation" Signals
You can pre-empt an escalation if you know what to look for. As a leader, you need to be asking three diagnostic questions every week:
- Is the team already behind, but it hasn't been communicated yet? (Also known as the "Green-Green-Red" project syndrome).
- Is quality lower than stakeholders expect? (Technical debt is just a fire waiting for a match).
- Is the "Human Math" failing? (If half your team is on summer vacation and your commitments haven't changed, an escalation is mathematically guaranteed).
3. Set the Narrative Early
If you see these signals, be the one to raise the flag. Getting ahead of an escalation by communicating the issue early allows you to maintain control. It’s the difference between saying "We have a resource gap that will impact the July launch," and having a stakeholder scream, "Why isn't this done?" in August. When you set the narrative, you are leading; when you wait for the escalation, you are reacting.
The "House on Fire" Rule
Lastly, we have to recognize that some escalations are entirely warranted. If your house is truly on fire, you want someone to pull the alarm immediately. We shouldn't discourage people from raising the alarm when there is a genuine crisis.
The problem is the "Kitchen Fire": the trivial matter that could have been handled with a fire extinguisher but was treated like a raging blaze.
Train your team to have discipline. Use the "escalation" button sparingly. If everything is a P1, then nothing is a P1. As a leader, your job is to protect the "Fireman Sams" of your organization so that when they do get called, they have the energy and the focus to actually save the day.
Conclusion
"Shooting from the hip" might make you feel like a cowboy, but eventually, you’re going to run out of bullets.
Stop rewarding the fire. Start rewarding the fireproofing. Make the "process" work so well that the "escalation" becomes what it was always meant to be: a rare, last-resort tool for extraordinary circumstances.
Thanks for listening to Lead Prompt. If you found this helpful, share it with a manager who is currently wearing a Fireman Sam hat, they probably need the break.
I’m John Collins, and I’ll see you in the next episode.
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