Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs)

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.

A Big Hairy Audacious Goal is a strategic business statement which is created to focus an organisation on a single medium to long term organisation-wide goal which is audacious, likely to be externally questionable, but not internally regarded as impossible. Reason might say “This is unreasonable,” but the drive for progress says, “We believe that we can do it nonetheless.”

There is a difference between merely having a goal and becoming committed to a huge, daunting challenge – like a big mountain to climb.

Perhaps the most famous BHAG type goal is President Kennedy’s challenge to the American nation: “that this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.”

A true BHAG is a visionary goal that is strategic and emotionally 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 organisation can know when it has achieved the goal.

A BHAG engages people – it reaches out and grabs them in the gut. It is tangible, energising, highly focused. People ‘get it’ right away; it takes little or no explanation.

It can be an audacious 10 to 30 year goal to progress towards an envisioned future, or it can be very tactical, such as "achieve 10% revenue growth in the next three months."

The essential point of a BHAG is better captured in such questions as: