There comes a moment when “dealing with it” turns into “allowing it to continue.”

That moment is rarely spectacular, no clear break you can point to afterwards as the turning point. It is often quiet, a gradual shift you only notice once you look back over a period and realise something fundamental has changed without your having made a conscious decision.

You notice that boundaries keep being crossed and that the damage is accumulating: absenteeism, mistakes caused by chronic stress, cynicism about the possibility of change, turnover as people leave the organisation because they see no other way out. And you notice something else, something perhaps even more unsettling than the damage itself: that you are starting to normalise the abnormal. That you are accepting things you would never accept elsewhere, in a different context, in a different chapter of your life.

Formal escalation sounds heavy. But sometimes it is the only adult move.

Not as revenge, not as an attempt to punish someone for what they have done, but as system correction, an attempt to bring the organisation back in line with its own standards, standards it has lost somewhere along the way.

Good escalation is boring. That is not a shortcoming but a quality, a deliberate choice to strip out any emotional charge that could undermine the message. Factual, not interpreted. Timeline, not vague about when. Effect, concrete and measurable where possible. Risk, clearly named in terms the listener can understand. Request, specific about what you need from whoever you are approaching.

Not: he is a narcissist, a statement that immediately shifts the discussion to character judgement and puts any formal body in a position where it cannot act, simply because a character judgement is not a basis for action.

Instead: there is a recurring pattern of decision-making outside the agreed governance, with demonstrable impact on quality and safety. I am requesting an investigation and protective measures. That is a formulation that gives the listener something to work with: a pattern that can be checked, an impact that can be investigated, a request specific enough to respond to.

Choose the channel that fits the seriousness of the situation. HR, for matters falling within regular personnel policy. Compliance, when rules or legislation are involved. A confidential adviser, when the nature of the situation calls for confidentiality and personal support alongside the formal route. The works council, when it concerns a structural issue affecting the whole organisation. Oversight bodies, in the most serious cases where internal channels have not worked or are insufficient.

And if there is intimidation, discrimination, or serious unsafety, treat it as a safety issue, not a conflict. That difference is essential, and it is more than a matter of wording. Conflict suggests symmetry, two parties of comparable power with a difference of opinion that can be resolved through dialogue. Unsafety calls for protection, a very different response, one that assumes an asymmetry that cannot be corrected through equal consultation.

Conflict suggests symmetry. Unsafety calls for protection.

The biggest pitfall in formal escalation is half escalation, an attempt that begins but is not completed, that threatens without following through. Threatening without following through significantly increases your vulnerability, because it shows the other party you are willing to consider the step but not to actually take it. That is information that can be used against you, a signal that your boundary will eventually give way after all.

If you choose escalation, do it with a file, the factual documentation discussed in an earlier instalment of this series. With allies, people who can confirm your perception and add weight to your account. With calm, an inner state that not only improves your presentation but also keeps your own judgement sharp during a process that can be emotionally demanding.

Psychodynamically, escalation is also a test for the system, a moment of truth that clarifies something previously unclear. Can the organisation correct itself, or does it ask you to adapt to what cannot be corrected? That is not a rhetorical question. The answer, which you get by observing the actual response to your escalation, tells you something fundamental about the organisation you work in, something you may have suspected before but now know with more certainty.

Research into institutional responses to complaints about power abuse confirms why the nature of that response is so informative. Organisations that investigate complaints seriously, even when the person accused holds a powerful position, signal that their standards weigh more heavily than individual positions of power. Organisations that soften, delay or ignore complaints signal the opposite, regardless of what they officially claim about their values.

Take twenty minutes today. Write one page: three incidents with date and fact, formulated as precisely as possible. One pattern sentence, the factual description discussed in an earlier instalment of this series. The effect on risk or quality, concrete where possible. And one concrete question for the system, specific enough to make an answer possible.

Do not send it yet. Just organise it. Just a reality check, a chance to see how the account looks once it is on paper, separate from the emotion of the moment you lived through it.

And ask yourself afterwards, gently but sharply, a question that exposes the cost of delay: what price are you paying right now to protect the organisation from the discomfort of a clear choice?

That discomfort, the organisation’s discomfort in making a clear choice about what it tolerates and what it does not, is a burden currently resting on your shoulders, in the form of ongoing stress, doubt and exhaustion. Formal escalation shifts part of that burden back to where it belongs: with the organisation, which carries the responsibility to enforce its own standards.

Notes for those who wish to read further:

1. Sidney Dekker, Drift into Failure (2011, Ashgate). On how organisations gradually drift away from their own standards, and why formal correction becomes necessary once gradual adaptation no longer suffices.
2. Amy C. Edmondson, The Fearless Organization (2018, Wiley). On the institutional conditions needed to investigate complaints about power abuse seriously.
3. Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm and Live with Themselves (2016, Worth Publishers). On how organisations collectively evade responsibility, and what formal escalation can change about that.
4. Erik Hollnagel & Sidney Dekker, Safety-II: The Past and Future of Safety Management (2014, Ashgate). On the distinction between safety issues and conflicts, and why these two require different institutional responses.
5. Wanda Orlikowski, Sociomaterial Practices (2007, Organization Studies). On how formal structures and informal power dynamics interact, relevant to understanding why escalation through formal channels has a different effect than informal resistance.