Don’t Dismiss It Just Because You Can’t Fix It
- anmol kalra
- Apr 15
- 2 min read
Reframing Escalation Culture in Ops Teams
The Invisible Root Cause
In most operations environments—whether IT service desks, supply chains, or support centers—teams are trained to focus on what they can control.
If the issue is local, technical, or process-driven, they fix it.
But what happens when the real root cause lies outside their direct span of control?
A shipping delay due to new tariffs
A surge in incidents tied to a vendor system outage
Repeated customs holds on imported hardware
Latency issues caused by third-party infrastructure changes
Too often, these get brushed off as “not ours to fix.”
But here’s the problem:
What can’t be fixed still needs to be flagged—especially if it keeps happening.
Escalation Isn’t Just About Urgency—It’s About Insight
While leading global transformation programs, I saw this gap repeatedly:Teams solved symptoms. But systemic patterns went undetected because they weren’t owned by anyone locally.
So we can change the way we view escalation(s)—not as a reaction to criticality, but as a signal of relevance.
How We Can Empower Teams to Flag “Non-Process” Causes
Structured labelling Of External Causes
We can standardize tags in our incident management system, including:
External Dependency
Vendor Delay
Tariff Impact
Third-Party Issue
This will give teams a clear way to classify issues they observed but cannot solve.
Train Teams to Escalate Patterns, Not Just Urgencies
We should build a new mindset:
“If it happens more than once, flag it—even if it’s not ‘your’ problem.”
This will help shift culture from fixing tickets to surfacing trends.
Connected Data to Governance
Escalated incidents should be grouped and analyzed via:
Control charts (to detect variation)
Standard event clustering
Dashboards for visibility
These patterns then can be routed to:
Vendor Management
Supplier Governance
Risk & Compliance teams
Suddenly, what was “noise” now becomes actionable intelligence.
4. Celebrate “Right Escalation” Behavior
Recognize agents who don’t just solve tickets, but elevate trends.
Reward pattern-spotters, not just closers.
Share wins because you will build a culture of preventers, not just responders.
The Impact
Faster detection of systemic blockers
More accurate root cause investigations
A sense of ownership and empowerment at the front line
And ultimately—a culture of prevention, not just resolution
📌 Final Thought
The most dangerous problems are the ones we stop talking about—because we think we can’t fix them.
Great teams are not just good at solving what’s theirs.They’re bold enough to flag what isn’t—because they know that’s where real transformation starts.
#RootCauseAnalysis, #OperationalExcellence, #ContinuousImprovement, #EscalationCulture, #ServiceDelivery, #ITSM, #IncidentManagement, #BusinessResilience, #DataDrivenOps, #ProcessImprovement, #LeadershipInOps, #ProcessBlindSpots, #ChangeManagement, #AnalyticsInAction, #RealTimeInsights, #SixSigmaThinking, #PreventDontReact, #CriticalThinking, #ProblemSolving
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