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Who really said it

Organizations don't get things done. Plans and programs don't get things done. Only people get things done

Not Colin Powell — he was quoting Adm. Hyman G. Rickover Hyman G. Rickover 1900–1986 · US Navy admiral · father of the nuclear Navy
Disputed In copyright

Colin Powell put these sentences into print — and on the same page handed them to somebody else. In It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership (2012), pp. 278–279, Powell recalls Adm. Hyman G. Rickover speaking them at a small office promotion ceremony in Washington in the early 1970s, and says their wisdom shaped his life. That memoir is the only primary source for the wording — the earliest text to fix it, and the only one that documents who spoke it: no publication under Rickover’s own name is known to carry it, and Powell is candid that he could not recall who was being promoted or where the room was.

Last verified 30 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Organizations don't get things done. Plans and programs don't get things done. Only people get things done. Organizations, plans, and programs either help or hinder people.” Adm. Hyman G. Rickover, as quoted by Colin Powell in It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership (New York: Harper, 2012), 278–79. Powell heard the remarks at an office promotion ceremony in Washington in the early 1970s; no publication in Rickover's own name carries this wording. Not a Colin Powell quote. Via Quotle.info

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Colin Powell. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by HarperCollins Publishers and the estate of Colin L. Powell). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Hyman G. Rickover — Admiral, US Navy · father of the nuclear Navy. Theme: "Organizations don't get things done. Plans and programs don't get things done. Only people get things done". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Organizations don't get things done. Plans and programs don't get things done. Only people get things done". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The only primary source

Spoken by
Adm. Hyman G. Rickover, USN
Occasion
A small office promotion ceremony, Washington, D.C., early 1970s — as recalled by Colin Powell
Recorded in
It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership, pp. 278–279
First published
Harper (HarperCollins), 2012

Organizations don’t get things done. Plans and programs don’t get things done. Only people get things done. Organizations, plans, and programs either help or hinder people. as Powell recorded it

All four sentences. Popular versions drop the fourth, which is the one that keeps the remark from reading as anti-management: structure is a multiplier on people, not a substitute for them. Powell prints the quotation as part of a short recollection — he could not remember who was promoted or where the ceremony was held, only what Rickover said when asked to say a few words.

Wikiquote: Hyman G. Rickover — the Powell citation

How we traced it

  • The wording sits inside a Powell book but is not Powell’s: Wikiquote’s Colin Powell page ↗ reproduces the passage from It Worked For Me (2012), pp. 278–279, in which Powell recalls hearing Adm. Hyman G. Rickover say it at a small office promotion ceremony in Washington in the early 1970s.
  • Wikiquote’s Rickover page ↗ carries the identical passage under the heading ‘Quotes about Rickover,’ cited to Colin Powell, It Worked For Me (2012), New York: Harper, first edition hardcover, p. 278–279. Powell is the reporter; Rickover is the speaker.
  • Rickover’s own published credo is close but not the same. The widely circulated excerpt of his 1982 Columbia University address ‘Doing a Job’ ↗ opens with the observation that people, not organizations or management systems, get things done, and does not contain the popular three-part wording. It is an excerpt, not the whole speech: the Naval Reactors History Association’s record of the address ↗ (5 November 1982, Columbia’s Thomas Egleston Medal ceremony) puts the full document behind a login, so we can only say the published excerpt lacks the wording.
  • Powell has a near-twin of his own, which is why the two blur: Lesson Eight of ‘Quotations from Chairman Powell: A Leadership Primer’ ↗ reads “Organization doesn’t really accomplish anything. Plans don’t accomplish anything, either.” Same idea, different sentences, and no credit to Rickover.
In copyright

The earliest text to fix this wording — and the only primary source for it — is Colin Powell’s It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership, first published by Harper in 2012, so the printed sentences are in copyright regardless of who first spoke them. Rickover’s original remarks were extemporaneous and are not known to have been published in his own name; the circulated excerpt of his 1982 Columbia University address ‘Doing a Job’ (©1982 H. G. Rickover) does not carry them, and the full text of that address is not publicly available to check.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

Who gets the credit, and why

Powell never claimed this line. It travels under his name for the dullest possible reason: it is printed inside his book.

Colin Powell quoting, not coining

Powell wrote the sentences down, so search engines and quote sites hand them to him. On the page itself he names the speaker — Adm. Hyman G. Rickover, at a small office promotion ceremony in Washington in the early 1970s — and adds that the wisdom of those words shaped his life (It Worked For Me, pp. 278–279 ↗).

Book-quote harvesters and reader highlights book author ≠ line author

A Goodreads reader highlight of exactly this passage from It Worked for Me records the four sentences under Powell’s book ↗ with Rickover named nowhere on the page. Lift a quotation out of a memoir and the memoirist inherits it.

Powell’s own Lesson #8 genuinely Powell

Powell really did write his own version of the thought: Lesson Eight of ‘Quotations from Chairman Powell: A Leadership Primer’ ↗ begins “Organization doesn’t really accomplish anything. Plans don’t accomplish anything, either.” Derivative ‘Powell leadership principles’ decks then loosen it further — one circulating slide deck ↗ ends a slide “it is people that get things done,” with no mention of Rickover at all.

Rickover’s 1982 Columbia address ‘Doing a Job’ not in the published excerpt

The obvious place to look is Rickover’s best-known management text. The published excerpt does not carry it ↗: it opens instead with the observation that people, not organizations or management systems, get things done. Same argument, different sentences. Note the limit of that check — the page prints an excerpt, and the Naval Reactors History Association’s record ↗ keeps the full address behind a login, so nobody has checked the complete text.

The sentences are Rickover’s, as Colin Powell reported them — and Powell’s 2012 memoir is the only primary source that fixes them in print, which is why Wikiquote lists them among quotes about Rickover rather than as a sourced quote by him ↗. Credit Rickover for the words, Powell for keeping them.

Context

Why it landed

Rickover spent three decades running the most unforgiving technical organization in the US Navy — nuclear propulsion — and he is remembered for procedure, paperwork and interviews engineered to break a candidate’s composure. Which makes the remark he tossed off at somebody else’s promotion ceremony faintly subversive: the man who built the machine telling a room full of officers that the machine is not the thing that does the work.

Colin Powell was in that room. He carried the sentences for the rest of his career and finally wrote them down in 2012. The same thought runs all through his own material — Lesson #8 of his widely circulated leadership primer, and, from the podium as Secretary of State on 28 October 2003, “People accomplish work, not organizations, not plans, not strategies” ↗. The line ended up filed under his name partly because he believed it harder than anyone.

The fourth sentence — “Organizations, plans, and programs either help or hinder people” — is the one that usually gets dropped.

How solid is Rickover’s authorship?

The chain has exactly one link. No transcript, recording or program of the early-1970s ceremony is known, and nothing published in Rickover’s own name has been found to carry this wording — the widely circulated excerpt of ‘Doing a Job’ ↗, the 1982 Columbia University address that is his management credo, does not, though only the excerpt is public. Everything rests on Powell’s memory, and Powell says plainly that the memory is partial: he could not recall who was promoted, or where.

That is still a decent chain. Powell is a named first-hand witness quoting an identified speaker in a book published under his own name, and he gains nothing by giving away a line this quotable. It is enough to say the words are Rickover’s and not Powell’s. It is not enough to give them a date, a venue, or a document.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Leadership Work Purpose

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Colin Powellen.wikiquote.org

Reproduces the full passage from It Worked For Me (2012), pp. 278–279, in which Powell attributes the words to Rickover.
Hyman G. Rickoveren.wikiquote.org

Files the same passage under ‘Quotes about Rickover,’ cited to Powell, It Worked For Me (2012), Harper, p. 278–279.
‘Doing a Job’ — Rickover’s management philosophygovleaders.org

The circulated excerpt of Rickover’s 1982 Columbia University address — not the full speech. Says people rather than organizations or management systems get things done, but not in the popular wording.
Quotations from Chairman Powell: A Leadership Primergovleaders.org

Powell’s own near-twin, Lesson Eight, in his own different words — the line most often blended with Rickover’s.
Why Leadership Matters at the Department of Stategovleaders.org

Powell’s 28 October 2003 lecture: “People accomplish work, not organizations, not plans, not strategies.” His own phrasing, not Rickover’s.
Hyman G. Rickover — biographyen.wikipedia.org

Life dates (27 January 1900 – 8 July 1986), his three decades over Naval Reactors, and the two Congressional Gold Medals.

The true author

About Hyman G. Rickover

Hyman G. Rickover

1900–1986 · Admiral, US Navy · father of the nuclear Navy

Hyman George Rickover (27 January 1900 – 8 July 1986) directed the original development of naval nuclear propulsion and controlled its operations for three decades as head of the US Naval Reactors office, and oversaw the Shippingport Atomic Power Station, the world’s first commercial pressurized-water reactor built to generate electricity. He is one of only seven people awarded two Congressional Gold Medals. He was famous for being crusty, obsessive and merciless about accountability — which is what makes the remark Powell remembered so pointed: the man who built the most procedure-bound program in the Navy telling a room that procedure is not what does the work.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Source

Colin L. Powell, It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership (New York: Harper, 2012), 278–79, quoting remarks by Adm. Hyman G. Rickover at an office promotion ceremony in Washington, D.C., early 1970s. No publication in Rickover's own name carries this wording.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Organizations don't get things done. Plans and programs don't get things done. Only people get things done’?” Last verified 30 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/organizations-dont-get-things-done-plans-and-programs-dont/

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