You have been waiting nine days for another team to answer. Or a decision is sitting with somebody who keeps not making it, and your work is stacked up behind it. You have chased twice. You know you should raise it with somebody above the problem, and you have not, because it feels like sneaking off to complain about a colleague.
I have watched a lot of people lose months to that feeling, so let me try to take it apart.
The person you would be raising it with is not a headmaster. They are somebody whose job includes deciding what matters this month, and they cannot do that with information nobody gives them. Your silence does not read as loyalty. It reads as fine, because no news is the only signal an organisation ever receives, and the cost of the delay lands on your deadline rather than on anyone else's.
Escalation done well is not an accusation. It is a request for a decision that you do not have the authority to make.
There is a shape to it. Go back to the person once more first, and say plainly that you will have to raise it if it is not resolved by Thursday. That is not a threat, it is the opposite of an ambush, and it also gives them the chance to tell you the real reason, which is usually that they were told something you do not know.
Then write four sentences. What you need. How long you have been waiting. What it is blocking, in terms the reader cares about. The specific thing you are asking for. Describe the blockage and not the person, because the moment it sounds like a complaint about a colleague, everyone starts defending people instead of solving the problem. Then say what you are doing in the meantime, so it is clear you have not downed tools.
And escalate at the point the delay starts costing somebody else, not at the point you became annoyed. Those are usually a week apart in the same direction.
Monday: take the oldest thing you are waiting on and write the four sentences.
– Asael Shinder
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