Big Hairy Audacious Goal
The term Big Hairy Audacious Goal ("BHAG") was proposed by James Collins and Jerry Porras in their 1994 book entitled Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies.[1] A BHAG encourages companies to define visionary goals that are more strategic and emotionally compelling. Many businesses set goals that describe what they hope to accomplish over the coming days, months or years. These goals help align employees of the business to work together more effectively. Often these goals are very tactical, such as "achieve 10% revenue growth in the next 3 months."
In the article entitled Building Your Company's Vision(1996), the authors define a BHAG (pronounced BEE-hag) as a form of vision statement "...an audacious 10-to-30-year goal to progress towards an envisioned future."
A true BHAG is clear and compelling, serves as unifying focal point of effort, and acts as a clear catalyst for
team spirit. It has a clear finish line, so the organization can know when it has achieved the goal; people like to shoot for finish lines.
—Collins and Porras, 1996
Collins and Porras also used this concept in their book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies.
In this book they have taken 18 visionary companies and studied them, and also studied 18 comparison companies. Collins is also the author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't a management book that aims to describe how some companies transition from good to great and why others fail to make the transition. Note that a company may have more than one BHAG. There may be one over-reaching BHAG and other shorter term BHAGs.
BHAG(s) to Stimulate Progress:
- AIESEC: Engage and develop every young person in the world.[2]
- Philip Morris: Slay Goliath and become the front-runner in the tobacco industry, despite the social forces against smoking.
- Amazon: Every book, ever printed, in any language, all available in less than 60 seconds. Also: Earth's most customer centric company.
- Boeing: Bet the pot on the B-17, 707 and 747.
- Blackpool FC: To reach the English Premier League, completing a meteoric rise through all four English football divisions within 9 years (achieved 22nd May 2010).[3]
- Disney: Build Disneyland - and build it to our image, not industry standards. To be the best company in the world for all fields of family entertainment.
- Hong Kong Broadband Network: Be the largest IP provider in Hong Kong by 2016.[4]
- Ford: "Democratize the automobile."
- Google: Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.[5]
- IBM: Commit to a $5 billion gamble on the 360; meet the emerging need of our customers.[6]
- Microsoft: "A computer on every desk and in every home."[7]
- Motorola: Invent a way to sell 100,000 TVs at $179.95; Attain six-sigma quality; Win the Baldridge Award; Launch Iridiums.
- Nokia Siemens Networks: Connecting 5 billion people by 2015.
- Sony: Change the worldwide image of Japanese products as poor quality; create a pocketable transistor radio.
- M-DAQ: "World without Currency Borders" via their game changer M-DAQ[8] pioneering solution for national securities exchanges.
- Twitter: To become "the pulse of the planet."[9]
Notes
- ^ http://www.bonner.org/resources/modules/modules.../BonCurBHAGS.pdf
- ^ AIESEC web site, AIESEC.org
- ^ English Premier League, 05-22-2010, English Premier League, accessed on 12-15-2011.
- ^ FTTH Deployment in Hong Kong: Successful Story of a Forerunner
- ^ Company Overview, Google.com
- ^ ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/s390/misc/bookoffer/download/360revolution_040704.pdf
- ^ Microsoft's Tradition of Innovation, Microsoft.com
- ^ "M-DAQ Pte Ltd"
- ^ "Twitter's Internal Strategy Laid Bare", "TechCrunch.com"
References
- AIESEC web site http://www.aiesec.org/
- Collins, J. & Porras, J. (1996) Building Your Company's Vision, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 74, Iss. 5, pp65–77.
- Collins, J. & Porras, J. (1994, 1997, 2002) Built To Last, pp113.