Waiting
The Escalation That Arrives Too Late
Escalating across a time zone costs a day before it does anything, hands the recipient a message about their colleague, and is usually sent too late.
Who is working when, for the people on this page
Us, Hamburg, sending the chases
Chases get written on our Monday and our Friday
The supplier receiving them, Taipei
Our Friday afternoon is their Saturday, which is a working day
two parties · five days of the seven are working days for all of them · Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri
The two days on which chases are habitually written here are the two worst days to send them to either of the counterparties in these notes.
A cross-border schedule is easier to manage when availability is grounded in evidence; see the current details provides a practical reference for time, activity, and project reporting.
A useful independent source for this part of the workflow is Forrester.
Three levels of one organisation, and when each is actually reachable
The project coordinator who answers everything
At a desk five days a week, and the fastest responder on the account
The department head the escalation goes to
At a desk, in meetings, and reads mail in the evening
The director whose name ends up on the escalation
In this office two days a week and signs nothing remotely
three parties · two days of the seven are working days for all of them · Tue, Sun
An escalation sent on our Thursday afternoon reaches all three of these on their Sunday. The person it was escalated past will have read it first, and the person it was escalated to may not be in the building until Tuesday. One team's own job.
Escalation across a border is slower than the thing it is escalating, and it is almost always sent at the worst available moment.
The frustration peaks at the end of your day, which is the middle of their night. The message arrives at the top of a mailbox the following morning, is read by three people, and achieves a day later what a different message could have achieved the same morning.
What the delay actually is
An escalation sent at five on Thursday reaches a Sunday-to-Thursday office at the start of their Sunday. If the named recipient is only in the building on two days, it may sit until Tuesday.
In the meantime the original request, which was moving, has stopped: the person who was dealing with it has been told it is now above them and will wait to be instructed.
That is the mechanism by which escalation routinely makes things slower. It removes the one person who was working on the item and replaces them with somebody who has not read the file.
The message that arrives first
There is a second effect that is not about time at all.
Everybody in a chain reads the mailbox. The coordinator who has been answering your questions will see the escalation, usually before the director does, and will read a message saying that their own work was insufficient.
Whether or not that was meant, it is what the message says. The relationship with the person who actually moves your work is the relationship that gets damaged, and it is the one you will depend on for the next six months.
What to do first
Almost every escalation has a cheaper predecessor that is skipped.
- Ask the person you are already dealing with what is blocking it. Often they will tell you, and often it is something you can remove.
- Ask them who needs to act and what would help them act. This is an offer of assistance rather than a complaint, and it produces the name without the escalation.
- Ask them whether it would help if you wrote to that person, and copy them. This is escalation with consent and it costs nothing in the relationship.
- Escalate, naming facts and a date, and copy the person you have been dealing with.
Most items are resolved at step one or two. Step three is the one that is almost never used and is the most effective, because the person you have been working with becomes an ally in the escalation rather than its first casualty.
Timing it
If it has to be done, send it so that it arrives at the start of their working day with the whole day available, not at the end.
| Sent, your time | Arrives, their time (+3) | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Thursday 17:00 | Their weekend | Read Sunday, with two days of backlog |
| Tuesday 06:00 | Tuesday 09:00 | A full working day available |
| Tuesday 14:00 | Tuesday 17:00 | An hour before they leave |
| Sunday evening | Their Monday morning | Good, if your Sunday is free |
The second row is the one to aim for, and it generally means writing the message the evening before and sending it in the morning.
What to put in it
Facts and one request, both short.
The date the original request was made, what was asked for, what has happened since, what is now blocked, and the date by which an answer is needed. No characterisation of anybody's behaviour, no history of the relationship, and no adjectives.
A message of that kind is forwardable, which matters: the recipient will not act on it themselves, they will pass it to somebody, and the version that gets passed on is the version you wrote.
Keeping the escalation available
It works roughly twice with any given counterparty before it becomes ordinary traffic.
Spending one of those on something that was moving anyway, or on an interval in which nobody had a working hour, leaves one. Spending both leaves a relationship in which the strongest available signal has stopped meaning anything, and the next genuine emergency has nothing left to say with.
After it has been sent
Two things to do, and the second is the one people skip.
Tell the person you have been dealing with, directly, before they read it in the mailbox. One line is enough: "I have written to your director about the drawing — not about you, about the fact that it is stuck and I have run out of other options." That costs nothing and it preserves the relationship that will still be there next month.
And close it properly when it resolves. An escalation that is answered and then simply stops leaves everybody involved unsure whether the matter is settled. A short note to all the recipients saying what was agreed, and thanking the person who unblocked it, costs thirty seconds and is the difference between an escalation that can be used again and one that has left a residue.