Free · Self-guided

The Authority Leak Scorecard

Find out in 10 minutes where decision rights are leaking in your escalation system. Seven signs. Your score and Authority Leak Map at the end.

Before you begin

How to use this scorecard

Check each sign that shows up during high-pressure customer escalations.
Count only patterns you have seen more than once. Do not score based on one bad day.
When you finish all seven, get your score, your Authority Leak Map, and the PDF.

The diagnostic

The 7 Signs of Authority Leakage

Check only patterns you have observed more than once.

Major decisions wait for the same senior leader.

High-pressure decisions have quietly become one person's job.

Check this if: the team pauses until a specific senior leader approves the next move.

Customer updates need too many approvals.

Approval chains slow the customer down and signal internal uncertainty.

Check this if: customer-facing messages get rewritten, delayed, or escalated because nobody feels clear ownership.

Severity is driven by noise.

The loudest customer or most anxious executive sets the priority, not business impact.

Check this if: severity changes based on pressure, volume, politics, or executive anxiety instead of clear business criteria.

The same escalation returns after being "resolved."

Closure is declared, but ownership was never actually reassigned.

Check this if: the technical issue closes, but the same customer, same pattern, or same internal confusion keeps coming back.

The team waits for direction instead of acting.

Clear roles exist on paper. Under pressure, they dissolve.

Check this if: people know the process during normal operations but hesitate, defer, or freeze during customer pressure.

Executives join calls without a defined role.

Presence signals urgency but creates confusion about who is leading.

Check this if: executives enter escalation calls and the room becomes less clear about decision rights, ownership, or next steps.

Postmortems produce discussion, not ownership changes.

The debrief happens. The system does not change.

Check this if: lessons are captured, but decision rights, roles, escalation triggers, or ownership paths remain the same after every review.

Check the signs above to see your result.

Your result

Your score

0 / 7

Ownership Holds (0 to 2)

Authority stays close to the work, even under pressure. The risk here is drift. A reorg, a new leader or one large customer can pull decisions back upward. Protect what is working before pressure tests it.

This week: pick one decision or customer update that still comes to you during an escalation, and ask who should already own it.

Authority Is Leaking (3 to 4)

Your process holds in calm moments. Under pressure, some decisions and customer updates start moving upward to you. Your team can be fully capable and still wait, because the decision rights around them stop holding when the stakes rise.

This week: pick one decision or customer update that still comes to you during an escalation, and ask who should already own it.

Executive Rescue Has Become the System (5 to 7)

Senior leaders have likely become the escalation path. Customers learn to go around the process, and the leaders trying to stabilize things become the bottleneck. That is a design problem, and design problems can be fixed.

This week: pick one decision or customer update that still comes to you during an escalation, and ask who should already own it.

From score to action

Draft Your Authority Map

Answer four questions to start mapping who owns what before the next escalation. Bring the map to the conversation.

The decision, message, or customer-facing action that should not require senior leader rescue:

When pressure rises, this should be owned by:

The person or role who should approve it is:

The senior leader should only enter if:

Want the procedure behind your result? Read the free Escalation Authority Runbook.

Talk through your result →

After the Scorecard

Bring the map to the conversation.

We walk through your result together, look at where authority moves inside your system, and name your first move.

Talk through your result →

The Authority Leak Scorecard

Where should I send your score and map?

Bring the map to the conversation.