Quotes on planning are widely circulated during military planning efforts to express the importance of concepts, provide insight, and even a little humor in the execution of professional planning and ultimately yield successful planning efforts.  Here is a comprehensive list of some of my favorite quotes on planning from prominent military strategists as well as others to help inspire and entertain your next planning effort.

The military Planner’s Favorite Planning Quotes

As a professional military planner, I’ve often been involved in planning efforts were various planning quotes are exchanged. This is more ofthen than not to inject a little light harted humor into an otherwise serious effort. At the same time these planning quotes often hold valuable lessons for planners to remember as they step through their process.

Planning Quotes Often Emphasize The importance of Planning as a process.

The power of planning is in the process not the product. Many planning quotes emphasize the importance of planning (the verb) over the plan (the noun).

1. “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower

This is one of my favorite quotes about planning and why I have it listed as number one.  Here, Eisenhower captures the key element of planning: the value lies in the act of planning, not in the plan itself, which can quickly become obsolete.  The continuous process of adapting to changing circumstances is where you find success. This is a great quote to start out any planning effort as a reminder that it’s about the process not the plan at the end.

2. “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” – Benjamin Franklin

Franklin simply states this fundamental principle for both life and military strategy and is likely the inspiration for many similar quotes. Many great quotes about preparing are listed here as preparation and planning are synonymous.

3. “No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.” – Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

This quote is a staple in military planning, though not his actual quote.  It is unclear who first stated this now-famous version.  While often attributed to Motke, his actual quote is…

4. “No plan of operations reaches with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main force.” – Helmuth von Moltke the Elder. 

Yeah just doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.  We’ll stick with the first one!

5. “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Mike Tyson.

Even Mike Tyson understood the lessons of Motke the Elder! He may not have known it, but Mike Tyson had a great sense that simply having a plan was no guarantee for success.

6. “He who fails to plan is planning to fail.” – Winston S. Churchill

One of the many planning quotes likely inspired by Ben Franklin.  Churchill’s words echo the indispensable nature of planning in any successful endeavor. One of the many iterations of that was provided by Ben Franklin.

7. “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” – Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln expresses the importance of planning concerning the action that must follow.  Focusing on the preparation to achieve the best result.

8. “Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.” – Alan Lakein

Lakein highlights the power of planning for the future.  He emphasizes one of the most important aspects of any good planning process. Plan with the end in mind.

Planning Quotes Can demonstrate the importance of Research and Design in your planning Process.

9. “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” – Sun Tzu

The Art of War is often referenced and recommended in business circles.  Sun Tzu expresses the importance of understanding your environment to any good planning process.  Knowledge and understanding, are essential elements of planning.  

10. “You can’t hit what you can’t see, and you can’t see what you don’t know.” – John Boyd

Boyd’s quote also underscores the importance of being familiar with your operating environment.  Every good planning process includes research. Without this research, you can’t be sure that what you are doing is going to work. 

11. “The best plan is only good intentions unless it degenerates into work.” – Peter Drucker

Drucker emphasizes the necessity of action in turning plans into reality. Once you have most of your plan complete, the critical step of implementation or putting it into action is still necessary for your plan to become a reality. Imagine if they just planned the invasion of Normandy but never ordered it.

12. “A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.” – General George S. Patton

Patton’s quote encapsulates the importance of decisive action and the risks of over-planning. Sometimes we call this the 80% solution and another reason that implementation is a critical step of planning. The sooner you can get to taking action the better.

13. “Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential.” – Winston Churchill

Churchill reiterates the significance of the planning process over the rigidity of the plan itself.  Churchill is credited for this similar quote to Eisenhower.  It is not surprising that they both have similar quotes as they met on numerous occasions and communicated extensively about planning in WW2 and events leading up to the Cold War.  Churchill had great respect for Eisenhower.

14. “Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.” – Thomas Edison

Edison’s quote expresses the essential role that planning has in achieving success when presented with opportunity.

15. “Success is where preparation and opportunity meet.” – Bobby Unser

American Racing legend Bobby Unser demonstrates just how common this type of thinking is related to successful people.  Or maybe he was just a fan of Thomas Edison!

16. “It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations if you live near one.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

Who knew that J. R. R Tolkien was an expert planner? Here, he highlights the importance of thorough risk management considerations in planning. This is also a great example of the research or design phase. Tolkien knew that you needed to thoroughly consider your environment and all factors before proceeding with your plan.

17. “Always plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.” – Richard Cushing

Similar to planning with the end in mind, Cushing highlights the wisdom of preparing for the future, even when the need isn’t immediate.  This concept also demonstrates the importance of risk management in planning. This quote is more about the roll of risk management in planning than it is about planning ahead.

18. “To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time.” – Leonard Bernstein

Bernstein suggests that a little urgency can be a key component of successful planning but provides the necessity to take action and avoid perpetual planning cycles. Sharing similar wisdom to General Patton, Bernstein understands the importance of getting to the action phase when good is good enough.

19. “A clear vision, backed by definite plans, gives you a tremendous feeling of confidence and personal power.” – Brian Tracy

This is one of the greatest benefits of preparation. When you have prepared appropriately, it can be extraordinarily calming in the face of an otherwise stressful or chaotic situation. Brian Tracy’s statement nails the idea that the simple act of planning can alleviate fear and apprehension when the need for action arises.

20. “Planning is a process of choosing among those many options. If we do not choose to plan, then we choose to have others plan for us.” – Richard I. Winwood

Several great planning quotes emphasize the importance of planning our future and that if we don’t, we only have ourselves to blame where we end up. Planning can also help us improve our decision making an further give confidence to the direction we are headed.

21. “Failing to plan is planning to stay stuck in the current situation.” – Debasish Mridha

Mridha’s quote is similar to Winwood’s above in that it expresses a similar consequence of a lack of planning. Without the guiding activity of planning, you are sure to remain where you are.

22. “Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.” – Allen Saunders

This quote shifts gears a little bit. It’s less about the importance of planning and more about taking a step back and make sure you’re living in the now. Saunders’ quote does highlight the unpredictability of life despite our best plans. It also serves as a good example for making sure you step away from the planning and get to action, and also make sure you’re taking time to observe your progress and outcomes.

23. “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” – Yogi Berra

If you never make a plan, you can’t be mad about where you are.  While humorous, Berra perfectly articulates the importance of planning in getting to where you want to be. You are in control. Unless you relinquish that control to someone else.

24. “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.” – Alexander Graham Bell

Bell underscores the fundamental role of preparation, a key component of planning, in achieving success. 

25. “Make time for planning; Wars are won in the general’s tent.” – Stephen R. Covey

Covey’s quote, while using a military metaphor, applies the concept of strategic planning to all areas of achievement.

26. “A goal without a plan is just a dream.” – Dave Ramsey

Ramsey succinctly differentiates between mere aspirations and achievable goals through planning. Goal setting is simply just a step within a broader planning process. Just setting goals alone will not get you there.

27. “Bad planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.” – Proverb

This witty proverb highlights personal responsibility in planning and a reminder that we can’t blame others for our failure to properly plan.

But, how do I plan properly?

28. “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.” – John F. Kennedy

Echoing similar concepts of planning before the emergency occurs.  Kennedy reminds us the time to plan is now, not when things are going wrong.

29. “Plan for what is difficult while it is easy, do what is great while it is small.” – Sun Tzu

Sun Tzu appears again to remind us that his knowledge reaches much farther than military strategy, and applies broadly to the approach of tackling challenges in planning.

Conclusion

This series of planning quotes is sure to invigorate and inspire your next planning effort. Emphasizing the importance of planning as a process and concepts like planning with the end in mind so that you can set the right mindset for planning. So bring them to your next planning effort or drop them in your back pocket next time you or your planning team need a little jump start to kick your next planning effort off right.

Maybe the last time you made a plan you ended up feeling like you just took one on the chin. I’ve been there.

There are endless examples and quotes on the importance of planning for success.  Most people inherently know they need to plan for success to occur, but they may be unsure how to plan for success, or even what elements of their plan will ultimately achieve success.  

Even Mike Tyson knew that simply having a plan was no guarantee for success demonstrated by his infamous quote, and a remarkably accurate rephrasing of the popular military planner quote “No plan survives first contact with the enemy,” itself a modern paraphrasing of 19th-century military planner, Helmuth von Moltke who said, “No plan of operations reaches with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main force.”

Now I just assume that Mike Tyson was not an avid reader of 19th-century military strategists, but what these great minds, both Tyson and Moltke the Elder, are highlighting is that you can’t assume your plan will guarantee success.  So…

How do I create a plan for success?

Drawing from my experience as a military planner I developed a series of repeatable steps for planning that can be applied to any effort.  Following these seven critical steps can put you on a path to making sure your plan has the greatest chance for success.  With some practice, you can become an expert at planning anything you set your mind to.

1. Define your Goal.  Plan for success with the end in mind.

The first step is to define the purpose of your plan.  This can be in the form of a goal or mission statement.  Depending on how broad or specific your goal or mission is will determine the complexity of your planning effort.  

If you were to develop a fitness plan, you may have a goal to bench press 225 lbs or complete a triathlon that might be a relatively simple plan.  But if your mission is to become a more athletic person your plan is likely far more complex but may include both intermediate objectives of benching 225 and completing a triathlon.

Plan with the end in mind.  With your goal or mission statement, think about the end. Where are you and what are the conditions under which you would claim victory?  Ultimately your goal or mission is the thing you will measure to determine if you were successful or not.  Did I complete that triathlon?  Am I a more athletic person?

What are your goals?  How do you properly set goals?  A common framework for setting goals is the SMART framework which stands for:

1. Specific
2. Measurable
3. Achievable
4. Relevant
5. Time-based

Make sure your plan fits this criteria.  Setting goals or trying to plan toward a vague concept will have you spinning your wheels with little progress.

2. Understand and evaluate your environment.

This is the research part of your plan. You may know what you need to do already, or you may need to do some research.  The purpose of this step is to fully understand yourself and the environment that you are operating in.  A great place to start is by developing what is known as a mind map. This is also the step where you would want to complete a SWOT analysis, or strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Evaluate yourself first.  What are your strengths?  What are your weaknesses?  What about your team?  What about your competition?  What are their strengths and weaknesses?  Your environment is always changing so consider new things. With AI becoming more and more ubiquitous, there may be an AI tool that can help aid your planning or execution effort that you want to be aware of.  

What are the elements about yourself and your behavior that you can change?  What are the elements of your environment that you can change?  Does changing them move you closer to your goal?  This is critical to complete before the next step as it will inform your decision-making in the future.  

If you have a team, make sure to assess your team’s strengths and weaknesses to help determine task assignments later on or assess the motivations and desires of a market you are entering. 

The key is to understand what actions can be taken that will result in the right changes to lead you to your goal.  

I want to emphasize that this is one of the most important steps in planning and often the most overlooked.  Failure to understand your environment is sure to derail any plan for success.  One of the biggest reasons is that skipping this step is one of the most common reasons many problem-solving efforts fail. They try to solve the wrong problem.

3. Determine the steps and sequence. Develop intermediate goals and objectives.  

Time to develop intermediate goals and objectives.  How are you going to achieve your goal or complete your mission?  Now that you thoroughly evaluated your environment you should have a good idea of what actions are necessary to accomplish your goal or mission.  What steps are you going to take to get there?  This is the core of planning.  These action steps, if performed, should place you at your desired destination. 

What order should they be accomplished in?  Who should perform them?  What are the tasks that you can perform yourself or delegate that will directly support the achievement of the desired goal or objective?  Reference the SMART framework above when setting intermediate and short-term goals.

You can also develop a list of supporting tasks. Those things that can be accomplished that while they don’t directly accomplish your objective, perhaps help enable or make your primary tasks simpler.  Using the fitness example, your primary tasks may be the exercises you perform but supporting tasks may be things like setting clothes out ahead of time or meal prepping. 

It is important to distinguish between your Ultimate or Primary Goal or Mission, and your intermediate goals and objectives. Do your smaller goals support the achievement of your primary goal? If your primary goal is to be more athletic. Benching 225 and running a triathlon may be good intermediate goals.  But if your Primary goal is to complete a Triathlon, Benching 225 may not be a good fitness goal as it doesn’t necessarily support completing a triathlon. While it may serve to make you overall a more athletic person, it does not directly support a triathlon the way swimming, running and cycling do!

Develop your timeline.  It’s important to set a timeline for accomplishment.  Going back to the SMART process this is the last step and is important for accountability. Not only do you need to be able to measure your progress toward your goal, it’s important to be able to assess your progress on the timeline to achieve it.  Don’t forget to consider the achievable aspect of this.  Don’t set a constrictive timeline so that you can’t accomplish your goal.  The timeline is an accountability tool to keep you on track and measure your progress and is an important element of the SMART framework.

4. Manage Risks.

If planning is the key to success.  Risk management is the key to planning.  So, what are the risks?  It all starts with a simple question.  What could go wrong?  What are the things that are going to get in the way of success?  These can be elements of your environment other people, and even your behavior and habits. 

Take a step back and think about your environment again.  What are things that you don’t necessarily have control over that might impact your ability to perform your tasks or that might act counter to your goals?  What are you going to do, when you you encounter one of these barriers?  Know that your plan is unlikely to be executed without conflict.  Remember Tyson and Moltke?  Understanding this step is the key to staying on track when things go awry.  

Risk management is an assessment of probability and severity.  Now you don’t have to be a data scientist for this step, though for complex plans this can be very helpful to fully understand risk. However, for simple plans, think critically about how likely is this thing to happen and how bad will it be if it happens.

5. Write it down. Assign Tasks and Delegate.

If you haven’t already as part of a previous step, write your plan down.  You can use a journal or planning tool like Monday.com for this step.  If you used the SMART framework for goals, this is a good way to keep track of each goal.  Make sure you record what you are measuring.  How will you measure your success? In line with your goals and mission statement. Write down the key metrics you will measure to ensure you are progressing towards your goal and ultimately the final measure that will allow you to say that you have completed your goal.

What are critical deadlines and timelines that need to be met to stay on track you came up with in step 3?  If you don’t have a fixed timeline set one for yourself.  Don’t ignore the T in SMART and give yourself the excuse of plenty of time not to stay on track.  Even if you don’t have a deadline, most successful people have already figured out that giving themselves a sense of urgency is critical to their success.

For longer-term or complex plans this may be the step where you determine the need for and hire an expert.  Do you need a complex financial or tax plan for your assets?  Hire a tax strategist.  Need to plan a major event?  Hire a specialized events planner.  Need to make a serious transformational health change or want to win a sports or fitness competition?  Hire a coach or Health/Fitness expert.  Developing a business plan?  Hire a consultant familiar with the industry you are pursuing.  Consider your strengths and weaknesses.  Focus your effort on your strengths.  Delegate to others, or even an AI tool, which may be a weakness.

6. Take action. Communicate.

No amount of success can be manifested without preparation (the planning) and hard work (the action).  Part of your planning needs to include when to take action.  This is also because you never just complete a plan and then act.  Part of your planning involves reviewing progress and updating your plan after an action is taken and you’ve started measuring your progress.  

Additionally, you want to make sure you don’t end up in a planning loop.  At some point, you need to take action.  A great lesson summarized by another famous military planner is that “a good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” – Gen. George S. Patton. Don’t get stuck in a planning loop. Take action!

7. Track your progress and make adjustments

How are you tracking your progress?  Using your Journal or other planning tool like Monday.com, how are you going to make decisions on when to make adjustments?  This is where you want to write your measurements that you will asses if you are staying on track.  Build your criteria for transitioning to your next task.  You also want to use this step to write down your plan for what you will do if you miss an intermediate goal or a measurement at a critical time that falls short.  Don’t forget about your risks. 

You may also want to consider quitting criteria.  What? But this is supposed to be a plan for success!  This is true, and success may be delayed.  The point of quitting criteria isn’t to give you an excuse to quit.  It’s to be a backup to make sure you don’t do permanent damage to something because you were too stubborn after starting your plan.  Quitting before you break something may just be the thing that saves your plan in the long run before making it impossible to continue.  The sunk cost fallacy can just as quickly destroy your plan as any other risk foreseen or otherwise.

Conclusion

The key to developing a plan for success is in the process of planning not the plan itself.  You just need a good point to deviate from.  It’s not a question of if you will deviate, it’s when.  As Bobby Unser says, “Success is where preparation and opportunity meet.”  The value is in the preparation.  Something will happen that will throw a wrench in your plan.  If you’ve followed a good planning process, you can handle it smoothly and continue on your path to success.  So plan in order to be prepared, and when the opportunity presents itself, you will be ready to capitalize on any success it offers.