The Real Cost of Escalation Is Invisible

“Let’s escalate this.”

It sounds responsible. Mature. Structured.

In most companies, escalation feels like good governance. You’re being careful. You’re looping in the right people. You’re making sure the decision is sound.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: escalation is not neutral.

Every time something is escalated unnecessarily, ownership weakens somewhere below.

And that cost doesn’t show up on a dashboard.

Let’s walk through what actually happens.

A manager faces a decision. It’s within their functional area. It’s not catastrophic. It requires judgment. But instead of deciding, they escalate.

Maybe the boundaries of authority aren’t clear. Maybe they’ve seen decisions overturned before. Maybe it just feels safer.

So the issue moves upward.

Leadership reviews it. Discusses it. Makes a call. Execution resumes.

From the outside, nothing seems broken.

But something shifted.

The manager just learned that decisions at their level are optional. That final authority sits higher. That ownership, when risky, can be transferred.

Escalation feels safe in the moment. Over time, it changes behavior.

Managers start escalating earlier.
Teams wait instead of committing.
Decisions stretch across more layers.

And speed quietly disappears.

This is where missed company targets begin.

Not in dramatic failures. In small delays. When decisions that should have taken hours take days. When calls that should have stayed local get pulled into leadership meetings. When clarity gets replaced by consensus.

Each escalation adds friction. Not enough to trigger alarm. Just enough to compound.

And then something else happens.

Founders get involved more often.

They don’t mean to become bottlenecks. They’re solving problems. Moving things forward. Unblocking teams.

But repeated escalation teaches the organization a pattern: the real decisions live at the top.

Authority centralizes. Ownership thins out. The middle layer starts managing information instead of outcomes.

This is the invisible cost.

Escalation doesn’t just move a decision upward.
It transfers confidence upward.
It transfers risk upward.
It transfers accountability upward.

And once that pattern sets in, managers stop practicing decision-making altogether.

Leadership teams often say they want empowered managers. But empowerment doesn’t survive constant escalation. You can’t build authority in a layer that keeps passing its hardest calls upward.

Here’s the part no one likes to say:

Some escalations are necessary.
Many are habits.

And habits compound faster than leaders realize.

If every complex decision goes up, the organization becomes top-heavy. Strategy gets buried under operational approvals. Founders spend time deciding what others were hired to decide. Targets slip—not because people aren’t working, but because decisions land too late.

Escalation feels professional. But repeated escalation quietly redesigns the org chart.

The question isn’t whether escalation should exist. It’s whether it’s happening because of real risk—or because ownership was never made explicit.

If a manager cannot clearly say, “This decision is mine,” escalation will feel safer every time.

And every time it feels safer, the organization becomes weaker below.

The cost of escalation isn’t visible in the moment.

It shows up later—in slow execution, hesitant managers, and founders wondering why everything still ends up with them.