If escalation depends on knowing the right person, tribal knowledge may be doing the job of process.

The observation

In many organizations escalation is a social act: you message someone who knows someone. It works, which is exactly why nobody notices it is not a process.

Why it happens

Relationship-based escalation is fast for the people who have the relationships, so it never generates a complaint from the people most able to fix it.

Documented paths age quickly after reorganizations, and nobody owns keeping them accurate.

What it may be costing

• New employees escalate late because they do not know who to ask.
• Coverage collapses during absence, holidays and turnover.
• Senior people become a routing layer for work that should have found its owner.

What I would look at

1. 01Write down the conditions that justify escalation, the person who holds the decision, and the fallback when they are unavailable.
2. 02Trigger the path automatically on elapsed time or impact rather than on someone's judgment.
3. 03Count the hops in your last ten escalations and remove the one that adds the least.