“If a person lacks trustworthiness, I do not know what can be made of them” appears in Book Two of the Analects. Confucius immediately compares this to a large or small cart missing the crucial coupling between its shafts and crossbar: it cannot move. Here, trustworthiness does not mean demanding unconditional belief. It means that words, promises and later actions remain connected.
Today the sentence need not require that plans never change. It asks us to explain a change and to speak promptly when a promise cannot be kept. If every statement is valid only for the present moment, others cannot organise their actions around it. What disappears is not merely a good reputation, but the connecting structure that lets people act together.
https://ctext.org/analects/wei-zheng
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Analects/Book_II
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