Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG)

Shoot for the moon, land on the stars

The idea

• Passion
  • A good BHAG is one you can be passionate about.
  • What are you enthusiastic about?
  • Where does your deepest motivation lie?
  • What are you doing it for?
• Skill
  • What do you do best of all?
  • Best of the whole world?
• Profit
  • What feeds your economic motor?
  • What realizes your turnover?

How to apply it

Some rules.

• Set for 20-30 years
• Innovative
• Action driven
• Convincing
• Exciting

Related models

• Goal Setting. The broader discipline of choosing the right goal before optimizing how to reach it.
• North Star. A single guiding metric or direction that a BHAG can rally toward.
• SMART Goals. A framework for shorter-horizon goals, in contrast to the multi-decade scale of a BHAG.

Sources

Coined by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in Built to Last (1994).