Planning, Not Plans

From Eisenhower’s Remarks at the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference, November 14, 1957. Eisenhower presents the line as something he “heard long ago in the Army,” not his own coinage.

In the same speech he keeps going and explains it. An emergency by definition will not unfold the way you planned for it, so the first move is to take the plans “off the top shelf and throw them out the window” and start over. What planning leaves behind is familiarity with the problem, deep enough that the second attempt starts informed rather than from scratch.