In a 2014 article in Harvard Business Review, Roger Martin describes how strategy is an uncomfortable proposition for many executives and goes as far as to suggest if you are overly comfortable with your strategy, you may not have a strategy at all.  There is a tendency for executives to want to be in control and play situations in a conservative manner.  Targeting a specific market or making difficult tradeoff decisions that eliminate other viable strategy options can wreck a career if wrong.  As a result, strategy has become a long drawn out process in many organizations trying to predict well into the future, all while playing extra conservative in the strategies they choose. In other words, looking for the middle ground and not making a true commitment.  Planning becomes just a means to satisfy the board or other stakeholders.  Another way to view this is that many executives rather fight over a small piece of a large pie, than target a large piece of a small pie.  When fighting in the large pie arena, there is much more room for error (forgiveness of bad choices) and many more customers.  Achieving mediocre results is probable, but excellent results will be more difficult to achieve.  To avoid falling into this trap, Martin provides several suggestions:

1. Design strategy around the customer because they are the ones who decide to purchase or not purchase your products or services.  Firms should decide upon a specific arena to compete in, then decide exactly how to market and promote to that customer.
2. Become comfortable knowing that strategy is not an exact science; there is no right answer as in accounting.  The purpose of strategy is to reduce the odds in the bets (what markets to enter and customers to target) a firm makes.  To the extent the board insists more on “knowing without a doubt” and less on making profitable bets with the odds in your favor, even though risky, the firm is at a risk of never developing clear crisp strategy.  It is therefore important to educate the board (and possibly managers) on the importance of picking a specific target market, and saying no to many other areas, that may yield small profits.
3. To increase the accuracy of your strategic choices, the strategy evaluation process must be ongoing and continuous.  Start by writing down all your assumptions about the customers, industry, your internal capabilities, and so on, before you enact the strategy.  Carefully study these assumptions as the strategy unfolds.  From here, you will gain a clearer picture of the true nature of the market and your firm and increase the odds in the future of proper target market selection.

Roger L. Martin, “The Big Lie of Strategic Planning,” January-February 2014, Harvard Business Review. 78-84.