Are you ever frustrated by teammates who cling to the past while you try to introduce novel ideas or new strategies? If your ideas are met with choruses of “that will never work,” “we can’t take that risk,” “let’s just stick with the plan,” your teammates are likely falling prey to a common decision making bias that former Rotman dean Roger Martin refers to as Underestimating the Risk of the Status Quo. If your team’s strategy can be summed up by the English wartime slogan “Keep Calm and Carry On,” you need some new approaches to tackle their resistance.

Martin describes how executive teams carefully explore the risk of different courses of action, but neglect to make a similar assessment of the risk of staying the course. Armed only with the risks of changing, it’s natural for the team to shy away from decisive action. Unfortunately, failing to assess the risk of the status quo does not mean the risks won’t materialize—it just means you won’t be adequately prepared when they do.

If you are a member of a leadership team facing a critical strategic decision, you have an obligation to address these biases before inaction leaves your business irrelevant. There are several strategies you can employ to combat the risk of underestimating the status quo.

Start by bringing the strategic planning conversations back to your current strategy. Frame the conversation in terms of changes in what customers need or want. If the customers haven’t changed much, point to changes in the competitive environment that make your strategy less sound today than it was when it was developed. Mine societal, economic, political, regulatory, and technological trends to identify any external changes that necessitate a shift in your strategy.

Then develop a risk profile for your current strategy using the same framework you’re using to assess your new strategic options. If you have assessed the risk of your strategic options in terms of brand risk, operational risk, market risk, and so on, do the same for the current strategy. An apples-to-apples comparison will allow the team to make a more balanced assessment of the best course of action. If reputational risk is high in the proposed strategy, but equally high in the existing strategy, it’s not a legitimate criterion on which to make the decision. Focus the team on the incremental risk of the new options and highlight any places where the proposed strategy is actually less risky than the existing one.

If executives on your team are endlessly asking for more information, effectively stalling any decisions or progress, try getting the team to put some boundaries in place. You can use questions like, “How much do we need to know before we can make a good decision here?” or “What would it take for you to have 80% confidence in this path?” or ”What is our window for making this decision?” By calling attention to the indecisiveness and helping your teammates get more comfortable with acting in the absence of complete information, you are more likely to get traction to move beyond the status quo.

Finally, deal head-on with team dynamics that stem from turf issues or self-interest. It is a delicate situation when new products risk cannibalizing existing businesses, but that’s the reality of innovation. If you’re seeing protectionist behavior on your team, invoke the best interests of the organization. I use the curves laid out in Clayton Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma to show how continued incremental progress will leave the organization vulnerable to competitors who are actively trying to change the nature of the battle. Then you can say something like, “What are we doing about the coming war over wearable computing? It’s not here yet, but how do we ensure we’re not irrelevant when wearables really gain momentum?”

It’s now common practice to manage risk with heightened awareness, disciplined processes, and due diligence. Unfortunately, we are more likely to apply these tools to evaluate the risk of changing than to evaluate the risk of staying the same. If your teammates are anchoring your business in the past, it’s your responsibility to help them see the risk of the status quo.