Escalation Is a Skill, Not a Failure

Part of Clinical Project Management (PM) Training: Sponsor Communication and Escalation.

About 1 minutes. Free, in your language, no account needed.

Escalate when the decision is not yours

Three situations require it: the decision exceeds your authority, the decision requires money or scope you cannot commit, or the issue affects participant safety or data integrity.

The last one has no threshold. A safety concern goes up immediately, regardless of how certain you are.

The reason people do not

It feels like admitting you could not handle it. In practice the opposite is true: a project manager who escalates cleanly and early is trusted with more, because the sponsor learns they will hear about problems while there is still time to act.

What destroys trust is a problem that arrives fully formed, with the obvious question of when it was first visible.

The shape of a good escalation

The fact, stated plainly and first. The cause, if known, and clearly labeled if it is not yet known. The effect, on the critical path, the budget and the data. Options, with costs. Your recommendation.

An escalation without a recommendation transfers the whole problem. An escalation with one transfers the decision, which is what you actually want.

Say what you do not know

The difference between "the laboratory has a backlog and we do not yet know the cause" and "the laboratory has a backlog" is the difference between a report you can act on and one that will need a follow-up conversation.

Stating uncertainty explicitly is not weakness. Discovering later that uncertainty was presented as fact is.