Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG)
A BHAG is a single, huge, ten-to-thirty-year goal that's clear enough to grip people without needing a business case to explain it.
Five steps run left to right, each one narrowing a bold ambition down to one sentence anyone can repeat.
Reach for this when…
- Your strategy is a list of initiatives and nobody can tell you what it adds up to.
- Growth has plateaued and incremental targets no longer motivate anyone.
- You need something bigger than quarterly numbers to hold a team together through a hard decade.
How to run it
- Set a long horizon - ten to thirty years, not next year.
- Draft one sentence: a target, a common enemy, a role model, or an internal transformation.
- Test it: is it clear in five seconds, does it need no explanation, does it unsettle you a little.
- Commit publicly - a BHAG only works if it's said out loud and can't quietly be dropped.
- Break it into stretch milestones so progress is visible before the horizon arrives.
A worked example
Situation. Rina Wibowo founded Angin Energi, a small wind-turbine servicing company outside Surabaya, Indonesia, whose five-year plan was a spreadsheet of targets nobody could recite.
Applied. She replaced it with one line: service every onshore turbine in Indonesia by 2040. It was audacious against her four-person team but instantly clear to everyone who heard it.
Result. Hiring got easier because candidates understood the point of the job in one sentence, and she started turning down maintenance contracts that didn't move her toward it.
The catch
A BHAG that's just a bigger revenue number is not a BHAG, it's a bigger quota, and people can tell the difference. Set one with no credible path and it becomes a slogan nobody believes within six months. It works on sustained commitment, not constant reinvention, so don't retire it every planning cycle.
If you could hit it by simply working harder at what you already do, it isn't audacious enough.
Origin: Jim Collins & Jerry Porras