The Plan Is Disposable. The Planning Muscle Is Priceless.

As we head towards the turn of the year, PR and communications teams are turning their attention to 2026 planning. For those searching for wisdom to help what can be a long and difficult process, some well-known quotes spring to mind. However, they give little comfort to comms leaders balancing the need to plan with a busy end-of-year schedule.  

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, a 19th-century Prussian field marshal, famously said “no plan survives contact with the enemy”. Something that communications teams know all too well.  

If you prefer your wisdom from someone more contemporary, Mike Tyson had a similar message with “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”.  

The conclusion being that plans tend to change the moment they’re put into action. I think there are few communications leaders who would disagree.  

The pace of change has never been faster 

The turn of this year feels like an especially difficult moment to formulate a plan that will survive ‘contact with the enemy’. The news agenda has a velocity that feels almost out of control, with stories bubbling up and then being replaced almost immediately.

The rate of change with the emergence of new technologies is almost as ferocious.

A search on Google Trends, for example, tells us that ‘agentic AI’ only emerged as a widely-understood concept less than 12 months ago, with the first meaningful internet searches appearing in November 2024. And yet its adoption has become one of the most important debates in technology. I doubt many comms plans for 2024 had much mention of agentic AI.  

It’s easy to forget how new some of the innovations that dominate technology media really are. OpenAI’s GPT-4, the moment when business started taking gen AI seriously, was only launched in March 2023. And you could argue mass adoption only really happened in 2024. Just one year ago

These rapidly emerging technologies may have felt like a ‘punch in the mouth’ for busy comms teams. So how to plan in a world that feels increasingly uncertain and ever changing?  

When so much is changing, why plan at all?

Perhaps the unspoken question is, against this backdrop, why would you plan in the first place?

For this another quote springs to mind. Dwight Eisenhower famously said, “plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”   

You may feel like planning this year is harder than ever but the discipline of planning remains priceless. The temptation may be to leave 2026 planning to as late as possible in order to gather as much intel as you can before committing a plan to paper. That would be the wrong decision.  

The case for early and consistent communications planning  

At Tyto we believe strongly in the discipline of planning, and planning early. Because while the tactics and the individual stories might change, working with our clients to formulate the overarching story and narrative that we want to tell in 2026 is vital.

We believe strongly in consistency in storytelling. Consistency over time, during the ebb and flow of the year, but also across geographies.

PRWithoutBorders allows us to communicate a consistent narrative and strategy across borders, while still delivering nuanced and intelligent local execution.

Our complete rejection of silos means that cross-border storytelling can be executed with a clarity that other agency models simply don’t allow. A clear and early planning process that defines that story across the year is vital.

And what is more, some of the very technologies I’ve been speaking about appear to value this too. Early research into generative AI engines has shown that message discipline and a consistency in storytelling is critically important for ensuring that generative AI presents accurate information to its users.  

There are other reasons to plan early. Allowing ourselves time to plan across borders means we hone our collective strategic thinking with our clients. We build a shared understanding of the story and narratives we want to tell. It creates optionality, especially where plans include detailed scenario planning. And it reveals constraints early, whether in time, budget or other resources.

So while your plan may not survive ‘contact’ with whatever 2026 may bring, the discipline of planning absolutely will.

And for that I’m reminded of another quote, but this time from a teacher from back when I was at high school. While it was about exam revision, it has always stayed with me: “If you fail to prepare, you should prepare to fail.”