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The phrase Big Hairy Audacious Goal ("BHAG") was proposed by James Collins and Jerry Porras in their 1996 article entitled Building Your Company's Vision. A BHAG (BEE-hag) is 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.
BHAG(s) to Stimulate Progress:
- Google: Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.1
- Google: Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal.2
- Boeing: Bet the pot on the B-17, 707 and 747.
- IBM: Commit to a $5 billion gamble on the 360; meet the emerging need of our customers.
- Ford: "Democratize the automobile."
- Motorola: Invent a way to sell 100,000 TVs at $179.95; Attain six-sigma quality; win the Baldridge Award; launch Iridiums.
- Philip Morris: Slay Goliath and become the front-runner in the tobacco industry, despite the social forces against smoking.
- Sony: Change the worldwide image of Japanese products as poor quality; create a pocketable transistor radio.
- 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.
- Nokia Siemens Networks: Connecting 5 billion people by 2015.
- Symbian: To become the most widely used operating system in the world.
Notes
References
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This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2007) |
- 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.
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