Escalation Is Not a Decision
“I’ll get back to you.” Nothing in that sentence is untrue. They will raise it, or intend to. What it omits is the only thing I needed: that the decision was never theirs, that nothing I said in that meeting could have moved it, and that I had spent three weeks building a case for someone who holds no right to answer it. I have asked for more people maybe a dozen times, across multiple companies and many managers. Not once did anyone open with “this isn’t mine to decide.”