Plans Are Worthless, But Planning Is Everything
Dwight D. Eisenhower? Winston Churchill? Richard M. Nixon? Anonymous
Dear Quote Investigator: The World War II leader and U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower apparently made a paradoxical statement about preparation. Here are two versions:1) Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
2) Plans are worthless, but planning is essential.
Would you please explore the origin of this saying?
Quote Investigator: In 1950 Dwight Eisenhower wrote a letter to a U.S. diplomat in which he ascribed a military-oriented version of the saying to an anonymous soldier. Emphasis added to excerpts by QI: 1
. . . I always remember the observation of a very successful soldier who said, “Peace-time plans are of no particular value, but peace-time planning is indispensable.”
During a speech in November 1957 Eisenhower employed the saying again. He told an anecdote about the maps used during U.S. military training. Maps of the Alsace-Lorraine area of Europe were used during instruction before World War I, but educational reformers decided that the location was not relevant to American forces. So the maps were switched to a new location within the U.S. for planning exercises. A few years later the military was deployed and fighting in the Alsace-Lorraine: 2
I tell this story to illustrate the truth of the statement I heard long ago in the Army: Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. There is a very great distinction because when you are planning for an emergency you must start with this one thing: the very definition of “emergency” is that it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you are planning.
The details of a plan which was designed years in advance are often incorrect, but the planning process demands the thorough exploration of options and contingences. The knowledge gained during this probing is crucial to the selection of appropriate actions as future events unfold.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In 1877 a war correspondent for the British newspaper “The Daily News” remarked on the limited value of plans: 3
Possibly, such movements did not enter the original plan; but plans are worthless when the fighting is once begun, and all depends on the inspiration of the moment.
In 1941 Winston S. Churchill published “A Roving Commission: My Early Life” which included a passage about writing that employed a military simile: 4
Writing a book is not unlike building a house or planning a battle or painting a picture. The technique is different, the materials are different, but the principle is the same. The foundations have to be laid, the data assembled, and the premises must bear the weight of their conclusions. . .The whole when finished is only the successful presentation of a theme. In battles however the other fellow interferes all the time and keeps up-setting things, and the best generals are those who arrive at the results of planning without being tied to plans.
In 1950 and 1957 Eisenhower made statements about the dual nature of planning as presented previously.
In November 1957 “The New York Times” reported on the speech by Eisenhower: 5
“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything,” he said he had heard in the Army. In an emergency, he went on, the first thing to do is “to take all the plans off the top shelf and throw them out the window.”“But if you haven’t been planning you can’t start to work, intelligently at least,” he said.
Also in 1957 an editorial in “The Wall Street Journal” reprinted the quotation: 6
The other day President Eisenhower dusted off an old Army aphorism—“plans are worthless but planning is everything”—and some of his hearers reacted as if he were talking in riddles.
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I disagree. The phrase is catchy, but inaccurate, especially for City Planners. Planning is a process, and you must be ready to shift actions based on circumstances. But it is also vital that you have spent time figuring out what is happening, and how to influence things to achieve a desired end.
I spent many years in both city planning and military planning. Both the process of planning and the plans themselves are important. The abscense of plans means that you are winging it.
Why Plan, When You Can React?
is a funny phrase and I often use it, but it is a joke. Far better to have thought carefully. And important to write a clear, concise plan that has agreement among the participants.
In the military there are continency plans for virtually everyting. Experienced officers spend a great deal of time analyzing possible conflicts and writing plans for how to deal with those conflicts. The plans are classified and kept on computers ready to be dusted off and used as we approach an actual crisis.
The military often conducts exercises with allies and other branches of the government using those plans, testing them and refining the plans based on outcomes of the exercise. "Wargames" is the term, but most exercises involve far more then just war - international relations, alliances, economic and political impacts, health and welfare are all considerations.
It is true that once the battle is joined it becomes a flailex, wich decisions made on the fly in reaction to the actions taken by the enemy. But that does not obviate the need for planning and planning.
A clear example is our several conflicts in Iraq. A great deal of planning had gone into possible conflicts and how we would handle it. In both major wars US execution was very good and a great deal of planning and plans had been developed and formed the basis for execution. The execution for the occupation was terrible - plans and planning and or execution was badly flawed.
In city planning our plans are much more static and predictable. We have no enemy out to destroy us. We lay out
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