Here's why Big Hairy Audacious Goals matter

The Boeing 747 prototype displayed to the public in 1968

Jim Collins, author of Built to Last, suggest that those who have Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAG) are more likely to be successful. Bob Galvin, a previous CEO of Motorola, said "at times we must engage in an act of faith that key things are doable that are not prove-able." Take the moon landing mission for example, President Kennedy said in 1961 that before the decade is out, we will land a man on the moon. That is certainly a BHAG. They did not go into a boardroom and tried to figure out how the vision and the mission will look like if they want to spend $549 billion on a space programme, because the goal in itself was easy to understand. July 20, 1969, President Nixon announced that the first man landed on the moon. This BHAG was so audacious that it was bigger that just one leader, and the mission did'nt lose momentum when the presidency changed. BHAG change the way that people are motivated, and here is how such a goal should look like:


A BHAG must:

• Be clear and compelling, with little or no need for explanation. It should be a goal (reaching the top of mount Everest), not a statement (Doing research and development for the purpose of finding sustainable routes on mount Everest that can be used to charter supplies).
• Fall outside most people's comfort zone.
• Bold and exciting in its own right, not because of a person or event, but because of the goal itself.
• Be followed up with another BHAG once it's achieved. Many companies have BHAG at different levels or different departments.
• Be consistent with the core values of the company.

In 1965 Boeing had the BHAG of building the 747 jet aircraft as a commercial plane while its competitors believed propeller driven planes were still the future. The goal was so audacious that they had to commit three times their annual profit of the past five years to it, a quarter of their net worth at the time. In the late 1960's Boeing had to lay of 86 000 people when the economy left them with few other options. Billboards outside Seattle read: "Will the last person leaving Seattle please turn out the lights?". But the commitment to building a 747 were still in gull swing. At the end of the decade the Boeing 747 was completed, the largest civilian airplane in the world. In less than 16 months the Boeing team, known as "the Incredibles", built the most successful wide-body airplane in history and in 2014 they celebrated the delivery of plane number 1500 to Frankfurt, Germany. 

BHAG allow people to be part of something bigger than themselves, go figure out what your next goal should be.