An escalation should contain four things: what happened, what has already been tried, what decision is needed, and by when. Most escalations fail because they are a forwarded email, which makes the recipient reconstruct the situation before they can decide anything. Reconstruction is the expensive part and the sender is the cheapest person to do it.
When to use it
Use it when something genuinely exceeds your authority or knowledge. Before that, check whether it does: a large share of escalations exist because nobody wrote down what the first person was allowed to decide.
It is also the right format for handing a live problem to someone taking over, which is a handover of a single issue rather than of a shift.
The template
The fields are in this order because the recipient reads them in this order.
ESCALATION From / when: 1. WHAT HAPPENED One or two sentences. Facts, not interpretation. Order / customer / product reference where there is one. 2. WHAT I HAVE ALREADY TRIED - [action] - [result] - [action] - [result] 3. WHAT I NEED DECIDED State the actual decision, e.g. "refund in full or replace". Include the options you can see, and which you would pick. 4. BY WHEN, AND WHAT HAPPENS IF NOT e.g. "before 4pm or it misses today's courier collection".
How to adapt it
- Keep section 2 even when it is empty. "Nothing yet, this is outside my limit" is useful information and stops the recipient duplicating work.
- Always include your recommendation in section 3. It is faster to agree or disagree with a proposal than to originate one, and it is how people learn your judgement.
- Section 4 is the one people drop. Without it the recipient cannot prioritise, so the escalation waits behind things that were merely louder.
- Add a value or impact line if your team routinely handles a wide range of order sizes.
Why it is this short
The four fields exist to move work from the person who has the least context to the person who has the most. The sender already knows what happened and what they tried; writing it costs them two minutes and saves the recipient twenty.
A longer template gets ignored under pressure, which is the only condition under which escalations are written.
Common questions
What should an escalation contain?
What happened, what has already been tried, what decision is needed with your recommendation, and by when with the consequence of missing it.
Why do forwarded emails fail as escalations?
Because the recipient has to reconstruct the situation from a thread before deciding anything, and reconstruction is the expensive part. The sender already has the context and is the cheaper person to write it down.
Should I include what I think we should do?
Yes, always. Agreeing or disagreeing with a proposal is much faster than originating one, and it is how a manager learns whether your judgement can be trusted with a higher limit.