Working with Leaders: Escalation & RACI

Two tools make you easy to work with: knowing how to escalate when you’re stuck, and reading a RACI so you know exactly who does what. Both are about reducing confusion — the first about where a problem should go, the second about who owns each piece of work. Master them and you’ll be the person leaders trust with hard situations.

Escalation: the ladder

Escalating means raising an issue to a higher level because the current level can’t resolve it — not to complain. That distinction matters. A complaint says “this is annoying”; an escalation says “I’ve hit a wall I genuinely cannot move from here, and here’s what I need.” Climb one rung at a time.

### What a good escalation actually contains

The caption above is the whole recipe, so let’s unpack it. A strong escalation is short and leads with substance, not emotion. Include four things:

1. The facts. What’s happening, plainly. “The vendor’s API has been down since Tuesday.”
2. The impact. Why it matters, ideally in money, time, or risk. “We can’t process orders, so we’re losing roughly 200 sign-ups a day.”
3. What you’ve tried. Proof you didn’t just punt the problem upward. “I’ve opened a ticket, called twice, and tried the backup integration — no luck.”
4. A suggested option. Even a rough one. “I think we should switch to the backup vendor for a week; I’d need your sign-off on the cost.”

Bring facts and options, not just problems. Leaders are far more willing to help someone who arrives with a recommendation than someone who drops a mess on the desk and walks away.

Two things to avoid. Don’t blame — name the situation, not the villain; finger-pointing makes people defensive and slows the fix. And don’t skip rungs without reason (see Module 2): jumping straight to an exec over something your manager could solve burns trust and usually backfires. The ladder exists so problems get solved at the lowest level that can actually solve them, and only the genuinely big trade-offs reach the top.

A quick word on urgency. If something is truly on fire — a security breach, a system down in front of customers — speed beats protocol, and most companies have an explicit incident path that bypasses the slow climb. Use it. The ladder is for ordinary blockers, not five-alarm fires.

RACI: who does what

A RACI clears up “who’s actually responsible?” for each task. It’s a simple grid: tasks down the side, people across the top, and a letter in each cell. Four roles:

• R — Responsible: does the work. You can have several R’s on one task.
• A — Accountable: the single owner who signs off (only one per task). The buck stops here.
• C — Consulted: gives input before it’s done — a two-way conversation.
• I — Informed: kept in the loop after — a one-way update.

Activity	You	Manager	Sponsor	IT
Build the report	R	A	I	C
Approve the budget	I	C	A	I
Deploy to production	C	A	I	R

Read a row left to right and you instantly know your job. On “Build the report,” you are Responsible (you do it), your manager is Accountable (they own the outcome and sign it off), the sponsor is merely Informed, and IT is Consulted for input. On “Deploy to production,” the letters shift: now IT is Responsible and you’re only Consulted. Same people, different task, different roles — that’s the whole point of mapping it out.

The golden rule: exactly one A per row. If two people are accountable, no one is — that’s how things fall through the cracks.

Watch for two smells in a RACI. A row with no R means nobody’s actually doing the work. A column full of A’s means one person is a bottleneck who has to approve everything. Both are worth flagging early, gently.

Spot it: escalation moves

Read each scenario and decide if it’s the right escalation move, then tap a card to flip it and check your answer.

Sort the RACI roles

Read each person’s involvement and drag them into their RACI role for that task — or tap an item, then tap a bucket. Hit Check placement when you’re done.

How to use it

When you join a project, ask if there’s a RACI; if there isn’t, sketch one for the parts you touch. Find your own name first — knowing whether you’re R, C, or I tells you how much to lean in versus simply stay aware. And when something’s stuck, the RACI tells you exactly who to escalate to: the A for that task is the person accountable for unblocking it.

Why it matters

Most workplace friction comes from fuzzy ownership and clumsy escalation — two people assuming the other had it, or a problem festering because no one knew where to take it. Escalating with facts and options makes you trustworthy under pressure. Reading and building a RACI makes responsibility unmistakable. Together they turn “who was supposed to do this?” from a recurring headache into a question you can always answer.