Plans are worthless, but planning is everything

You can’t believe every quote that you read on the Internet; many of them aren’t true. When I came across this quote from President Eisenhower, I had to dig a little deeper. “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” I found the speech where he uses this quote. It’s actually a saying that the US Army has used for years. Eisenhower was emphasizing that we plan so we know a situation in its entirety, yet the next thing we do is throw out all of those plans and start anew to determine the correct approach.

It seems counter-intuitive. What’s the use of planning if all you’re going to do once a problem arises is throw out those plans and start over? What does planning give us? What is it about the planning process that is valuable? He goes on to say, “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.” Yet, while doing risk planning, you are likely gaining a better understanding of the environment or system that will greatly help you respond in an appropriate way.

When I sit down with my project team to do risk planning, the first thing we do is identify the risks that could happen. There are many different tools and techniques for this. Often this list contains risks with a low likelihood of occurrence, but we’ve thought through the probability of their happening, the potential impacts, and responses if they occur. This exercise helps us understand the environment and provides some context around each risk so we’re prepared.

When a risk is realized in my projects, I tend to follow the Risk Management Plan that the team put together during planning. Sometimes, the response will need small variations. Sometimes it will work just the way we planned it. In either case, thanks to the planning, the team has already thought about the possibility. So we don’t really have to start over, just maybe adjust accordingly.