The email arrives on Friday at 4:40 pm. Copied in are a director on the client’s side and the CEO on ours. The first sentence reads: “We are deeply disappointed with the cooperation so far.”
The PM replies within the hour. They apologise, promise a fix by Monday and sit down to it themselves on Saturday. On Monday the client says thank you. Three weeks later the next email arrives, in the same tone, with the same list of people in copy.
By the third time the PM knows the pattern by heart. They take the hit, put the fire out with their own weekend and go back to work. The team knows nothing, the sponsor only sees that “it’s been dealt with”. From the outside it looks like good escalation management. In reality nobody is managing it.
How to tell that you are only absorbing
There are three signs, visible only with time.
The first: escalations come back at the same rhythm and concern similar things. Each was put out, none was explained.
The second: the only person who knows the full history is the PM. The team doesn’t know what the client complained about, so it has no way to avoid it next time.
The third: after every escalation the plan stays the same, and the only thing that grows is one person’s overtime.
If all three are true, the PM has become a shock absorber. They protect everyone from the jolt, and so nobody but them feels that the road is full of holes.
What the client is really saying
An escalation is rarely about what the email says. The bug on the orders screen is a pretext. Underneath there is usually one of three things.
The client doesn’t know what is going on and is the last to hear about delays. The client heard a promise nobody wrote down, and its date is just passing. Sometimes the person writing the email is under pressure on their own side and needs proof that they are pushing the supplier.
In my experience the fastest way there is one question asked on the phone, not by email: “what would have to happen for you not to have to write an email like this a month from now?” The answer almost never concerns the bug from the first paragraph.
Four moves instead of one
Managing an escalation differs from firefighting in that it leaves a trace and changes something for good.
A reply within the hour, with no promise. I confirm the email arrived and give the time at which I will come back with something concrete. A promise made in the first hour is usually a promise made without the team.
A conversation with the team before the substantive reply. The people who are to fix something should hear what happened from the PM, not read it in a forwarded email.
One sentence to your own sponsor. What the client raised, what we are doing, whether I need anything from the sponsor. A sponsor who learns about the escalation from the CEO asks very different questions afterwards. The same structure a sponsor update needs works here in miniature.
One change that stays. A weekly call with the person who escalated. A list of promises kept jointly with the client. Earlier notice of every slip. It also helps to settle who talks to the client about what. Without this fourth move the previous three are just more efficient firefighting.
When to escalate yourself
Sometimes the client is right and the problem lies beyond the PM’s reach. There aren’t enough people, the contract promises something that can’t be delivered, or the supplier hasn’t answered for a month.
Then taking the escalation on yourself is the worst way out. A PM who rescues the situation with their own weekend for the third time running is hiding from the company the fact that the project is badly set up. Better to go to the sponsor with one sentence: the client is escalating for the third time over the same thing, and the cause is outside my authority.
One question for this week
Think back to the last escalation from a client. What changed for good after it, apart from the number of your overtime hours?
All situations described in this article are based on real events, but contain no company names, no individual names, and no data from any specific project.
