All business owners and executives know that strategy is important. But almost all also find it unnerving, because it forces them to confront a future at which they can only guess. An executive may well fear that getting strategic decisions wrong will wreck his or her career, and small business owners know that the wrong bet may spell the end of their business altogether.

The natural human reaction is to make the challenge less daunting by turning it into a problem that can be solved with tried and tested tools. The result is hours (Weeks? Months?) wasted producing a detailed plan containing cost and revenue projections, competitor assumptions, and marketplace analysis that makes everyone feel MUCH better about the bets that are about to me made.

Great. Everyone now feels comfortable. What they don’t realize, however, is just how awful and dangerous the new plan is and the likely common traps they have fallen into undertaking this “feel good” exercise.