Circle of escalation

A most excellent phenomenon that can occur in organisations of a certain size, and is guaranteed to happen in a big one.

“This is okay with me, but you need to confirm with Tax,” you say, happy that you have passed the tangled skein off your desk.

Of course, the tangled skein has not winked out of experience: it has simply landed on the desk of some poor, overworked attorney in Tax, who will have exactly the same aspiration as you. To fulfill it she will take exactly the same approach. “There may be an increased risk of retrospective withholding which it is hard to quantify,” she will say (one gets very adept at saying this sort of thing quite quickly) but if you can absorb that additional risk then this I have no objections."

And lo, off the escalation goes to the business. Salespeople, naturally, have but one goal — impregnating their clients — but not in a way that involves assuming any personal responsibility for a transaction which goes wrong. Up the chain it goes, to management.