Managing Escalations

In this short video, Tim gives his take on managing escalations as an in-house legal leader.

Transcript

Question: I have been in a position where they escalate everything even if it's not legal slash compliance. How do you deal with that?

Answer: First of all, I'm thankful. I'd rather have people over-communicate with me than under-communicate. There have been relatively few times in my life where I've been like, "Wow. Things really went south because someone over-communicated with me."

If people are habitually coming to you with the same question that's not in your world, then just figure out the answer and a way to communicate it effectively. Then whether it's a company wiki or just you have the same response over email. Even if it's not a legal issue, but you know the answer, just answer it. If not, what I would do is is really try to understand where the question's coming from. Like, is it a question that can be solved through some other sort of process, a resolution process? And if so, can you help build and implement that process where it's like, questions that fit these criteria go in this direction direction.

But all in all, I actually see that as a really good thing because it's someone who obviously doesn't know where to go to answer that question, and so they come to you. Because you've done a good job as a legal leader showing that you know a lot about a lot of different parts of the business. I actually think it's a really good thing, and maybe it's annoying, but rather be temporarily annoyed than than in the dark.