by Jason Davis on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 | 8 Comments »

My first job out of the Air Force Academy was simple: Manage the ‘task list’ of action items and have them ready for the Colonel’s stand-up staff meeting at 7 AM. The expectations were clear – Show up on time with a status for every task, and run through brick walls if needed to chase down the contributors to make sure nothing was late.  This was not the type of leader that accepted no shows, no status, or late. It was an unassuming job, and trust me when I say I wasn’t the envy of any of the other junior officers.  Even the guy running the snack room liked his discreet, no pressure duty more than being in charge of the task list.

The Colonel expected his directs to be managing their projects to tight schedules, and the stand-up was specifically to highlight issues that couldn’t be handled without involving senior management – those sticky issues that needed some additional horsepower from the top to drive decisions or outcomes to keep the projects on schedule.  It wasn’t uncommon to witness the Colonel tear apart project managers for ineffectively escalating issues.  Some project managers would avoid escalation at all costs, only escalating at the 25th hour when remediation was ineffective because it was too late.  Others were alarmists, escalating every issue or decision to leadership.  This was the first time I realized just how important mastering the art of escalating project issues is to being a high-performing project manager.

The ability to strategically manage escalation is one of the key differentiators between the Rockstar Project Managers (PM) and the average, or even good, PMs.

To kick off my Rockstar Project Management Series – here are a few tips on how to manage issue escalation effectively:

1. Timing is Everything: It’s a delicate balance, escalate too early and your manager will feel like they are doing your work for you; Escalate too late and the project slip is on your shoulders.  Effective escalation is an art, not a science, but in general an issue should be escalated after all reasonable avenues of resolution have been investigated and exhausted without success, but while allowing reasonable runway for the escalation to still result in a successful outcome.  Issues must be escalated in time to enable management to outline and execute a mitigation strategy.

2. Don’t be an Alarmist: Have you ever looked at an issues log and seen every item classified as high priority?  If you are a business sponsor, is your e-mail stream full of status updates from project managers that are over-communicating on every task/issue?  Project Manager’s should set reasonable reporting requirements with the management.  Report at a milestone or major task level, but manage your project at the task level.  Managers will appreciate the quiet progress and will take the issues that you do raise much more seriously.

3. Have a Process and Follow Through Simply escalating an issue is not enough.  There should be a process to track risks as they matriculate into issues, and then the systematic burn-down of those issues, including those that are escalated for action.  Escalated issues should also include documentation as to what actions have been taken, and recommendations for actions the manager can take to help resolve the issue.  Most business sponsors/managers won’t be as close to your project as you are, and your success lies in making them successful.  Don’t just throw issues on their desk and go grab DunkinDonuts

4. Communicate: Managers shouldn’t be completely surprised to see an issue escalated to them.  Under normal circumstances, you would have been tracking progress on this issue and communication would have occurred that there was an issue that may require escalation.  Transparent, early communication or risks will prevent embarrassment later.  Knowing what to communicate and what to work behind the scenes will mean the difference between Rockstar PM and a good or average PM.

Rockstar project management involves managing the balance because as much as leadership (and clients) don’t like to hear bad news on their project, they don’t like the Boy Who Cried Wolf either. The best project managers, and the best consultants, understand the delicate balance between candid project status with timely escalation of critical issues, and over-communication issues to the detriment of the project teams reputation and ability to work autonomously.

(Image courtesy of http://braddocksblog.com)