back to the drawing board
/bæk tə ðə ˈdrɔːɪŋ bɔːd/
to start planning again because the first plan did not work
In the video
The client hated the team’s plan, and the boss sighs, “Back to the drawing board!” Peter takes it literally: he grabs a giant crayon, goes to an easel and draws a portrait of the boss, with PLAN! written on top. The boss shouts, “Is that a drawing of ME?!”
What it really means
The phrase comes from engineers and designers, who drew their plans on a drawing board. If the thing they built did not work, they went back to the drawing board and designed it again from the start.
Today people use it for any plan that fails and has to be rethought, with no drawing involved. It often sounds a little disappointed, but it also means “we won’t give up, we’ll try again”.
When to use it
Use it when a plan, proposal, product or experiment fails and you have to start again. Common patterns are “it’s back to the drawing board” and “go back to the drawing board”. It works in both speech and writing, at work or at school.
Examples
- The test failed, so it’s back to the drawing board.
- The client rejected our design. Back to the drawing board!
- If this idea doesn’t work, we’ll go back to the drawing board.
Common mistake
✗ The plan worked, so we went back to the drawing board.
✓ The plan failed, so we went back to the drawing board.
You only go back to the drawing board when the first plan failed. If the plan worked, there is no reason to start again.
Similar phrases
- start from scratch start again with nothing done, not always after a failure
- go back to square one go back to the start, losing all your progress