Escalate when you can’t adequately handle your responsibilities and make sure that the people who work for you are proactive about doing the same. Escalating means saying you don’t believe you can successfully handle a situation and that you are passing the Responsible Party job to someone else. The person you are escalating to, the person to whom you report, can then decide whether to coach you through it, take control themselves, have someone else handle it, or do something else. It’s critical that escalation not be seen as a failure but as a responsibility. All Responsible Parties will eventually face tests that they don’t know whether they can handle; what’s important is raising their concerns so their boss knows about the risks and both the boss and the escalating responsible-parties can get in sync about what to do about it. There is no greater failure than to fail to escalate a responsibility you cannot handle. Make sure your people are proactive; demand that they speak up when they can’t meet agreed-upon deliverables or deadlines. Such communication is essential to get in sync both on the case at hand and on what the person handling it is like.