No Substitute for Victory: Lessons in Strategy and Leadership from General Douglas Macarthur

Chapter 28. Plan Honestly

Leaders are planners. To achieve more than a random chance of success, they must plan before they act. To maximize their chances of success, they must create and develop plans that are attainable.

MacArthur was a bold and ambitious planner, whose plans were almost always successfully executed because they were realistic in their assumptions, goals, and implementation. As he explained after describing the Army's mobilization planning in his 1931 annual report as Chief of Staff:

Our responsibility in this matter is too great to permit the inclusion in our plans of any proposed policy of whose successful operation in war we do not feel we can give assurance. Certainly, our plans are the result of honest effort. They are ...