The trap of mistaking caution for progress
The leader leaned back in their chair, clearly frustrated.
“My team can’t move,” they said. “Every time something unexpected comes up, they get bogged down in meetings, reports, risk registers. It’s like they’re sinking in quicksand—the more they try to protect themselves, the deeper they go.”
This wasn’t about capability. The team was smart and experienced. But they were so focused on following process and getting things right that they avoided engaging with risk directly. The result? Analysis paralysis. Decisions delayed. Creativity shut down. Opportunities missed.
The leader wasn’t asking them to throw caution aside. What they wanted was something harder—to face into risk, adapt quickly, and still keep things moving.
It’s a bit like driving in heavy fog. Some people crawl along so slowly, headlights on high beam, terrified of what might appear. But go too slow and you create a new danger—you lose momentum, other drivers swerve around you, and you miss the turns you needed to take.
Why ignoring risk only makes it grow
When teams default to risk avoidance, they trade safety for stagnation. Risk doesn’t vanish when ignored; it mutates and grows. And in a world moving this fast, risk avoidance isn’t just costly—it’s a competitive disadvantage.
This was echoed by Chris Deeble CSC AO FAIPM, Deputy Secretary of the Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group in the Australian Department of Defence, in his opening keynote at the Australian Institute for Project Management International Conference 2025. His provocation was clear: to run faster, leaders and teams must adopt a risk appetite.
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) describes risk culture as the shared norms, values and behaviours that shape how risks are identified, discussed and managed. But culture doesn’t arise in a vacuum. It’s influenced by what leaders model and tolerate—and also by what they inherit. Patterns of avoidance or responsiveness can run deep, built up over years or even decades.
Which means that if leaders are frustrated by paralysis in their teams, they hold both the opportunity and the responsibility to shift it. That shift begins not with policy or process, but with how leaders themselves engage with risk—and the tone they set for others. And here’s the kicker: most people aren’t naturally equipped for it.
A Queensland University of Technology study found that 90% of people in the workplace do not have a clear tolerance for ambiguity. In practice, that means anxiety, hesitation, and risk aversion take over when the path isn’t clear. People stall rather than adapt. By contrast, those with higher tolerance demonstrate greater creativity, faster decision-making, and more effective problem-solving. They don’t avoid risk—they work with it.
How leaders shape the tone of risk culture
If you want to shift your team from avoidance to responsiveness, start here:
- Name the pattern. Call out when your team hesitates, over-analyses, or defaults to “safe” but stagnant choices. Naming it brings it into the open.
- Model engagement, not avoidance. Show how you weigh risks openly, make a call, and adjust if needed. Your people will follow your lead.
- Create safe stretch with urgency. Give your team low-stakes risks to test—but set a pace that requires them to decide and act quickly. The point is to build confidence in moving faster, not just safer.
- Reinforce progress. When they engage with risk, acknowledge it—even if the outcome wasn’t perfect. Debrief what worked and what didn’t, and avoid punishing missteps. Every attempt is data for the next move.
- Shift the conversation. Instead of asking “how do we avoid risk?”, ask “how do we engage with it responsibly?”
Your role is to provide the guardrails that make experimentation safe—so your team feels secure enough to take risks, and you feel secure enough to let them.
Leaders don’t control the storm, but they do set the tone for how their teams navigate it. Every step toward risk responsiveness plants a cultural marker—and over time, those markers add up to momentum.
To speed this up, the eight evidence-based skill superpowers offer a practical way to build tolerance for ambiguity and give your team the tools to engage with risk at pace. If you’re curious, reach out—I’d love to talk it through with you.
This week reflect on where your own caution might be teaching your team to avoid risk, rather than engage with it?
