Forget New Year’s resolutions. What’s your Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG)?

It’s time to ditch New Year’s resolutions in favour of something much more powerful, the BHAG.

A BHAG – pronounced Bee-hag – is a Big Hairy Audacious Goal that stretches you to achieve greatness. It plays on Goal Setting Theory, which states that bigger goals force you to strategise, so are more likely to get done.???

A quick example: a New Year’s resolution is to cycle more; a BHAG is to cycle from London to Paris in May. The first is easy to swerve if the weather’s a bit rubbish or you don’t feel like going out, but if you duck training for a huge bike ride, you’re in trouble. Of the two, the BHAG gets achieved.?

Why? The BHAG cannot be left to chance; its scale forces you to reinvent how you train and create a plan. It is also time-bound (May’s hard deadline) and measurable (around 240 miles between the two capitals).?

The acronym BHAG was coined by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in the superb business book, Built to Last: successful habits of visionary companies. They argue that BHAGs force you to imagine a future where you have reached the pinnacle of success and motivate your team to ‘think big’ rather than incrementally. ?

The most famous BHAG of all

Probably the most famous BHAG from the business world is Bill Gates’s famous vision for Microsoft: "A computer on every desk and in every home." In the 1980s, when computers could fill whole rooms, goals couldn’t get bigger or hairier. Yet it worked. Here’s why.?

In articulating a clear BHAG, Gates achieved two things:

1. Shifted Microsoft’s focus from short-term goals, such as an exclusive licensing deal with a single company?
2. Forced his team to ask bigger questions, such as ‘how can we create an operating system that we can license for mass business and consumer use?’?

BHAG’s versus New Year’s resolutions

Three out-of-this-world BHAGs

Consider these three company goals:

• SpaceX - Making humanity multiplanetary
• Open AI - To ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity
• Amazon - To be Earth’s most customer centric company?

All three tick the boxes in the BHAGs column, particularly the ‘defies belief’ criteria. Like Microsoft, these companies have gone really big and really hairy, setting humanity and Earth in their sights.

Five steps to choosing your BHAGs

At 2Y3X, we take the essence of BHAGs to create ambitious 2-3 year goals. Examples include reaching ￡4 million EBIT, tripling turnover, or becoming a market leader, but if you want to colonise Mars, that’s fine too.?As with the above cycling example, BHAGs can be personal goals too.

1. Choose a goal that is challenging but ultimately achievable. Involve your team if it’s a business (rather than personal BHAG).?
2. List all the things that need to happen/change to achieve your BHAG
3. Working backwards, organise tasks into quarterly sub-goals
4. Set metrics and track progress
5. Communicate your BHAG clearly and widely to stakeholders, including your clients, suppliers and employee. If it’s a personal BHAG telling others will keep you accountable.?

Need help with goal setting?

Reach your goals faster with 2Y3X. Book in with Global Managing Director Mwangala (Mo) Lishomwa for an informal chat or follow us on LinkedIn for articles and live events on growing your business.

To find out if you’re ready to scale take our four-minute self-assessment test (scroll up for link). It quickly identifies your strengths and weaknesses and might even inspire a BHAG or two!