BHAGs [Big Hairy Audacious Goal] have animated great leaders throughout history, who have used them to stimulate progress and galvanize people. It doesn’t really matter whether you call it “mission” or “BHAG” or anything else that works for you. What matters is that you commit to something that meets the tests of a BHAG. Ask yourself the following questions about any BHAG:

• Do you and your people find the BHAG exciting?

• Is the BHAG clear, compelling, and easy to grasp?

• Does the BHAG connect to the purpose of the enterprise?

• Is the BHAG undeniably a goal, not a verbose, hard-to-understand, convoluted, impossible-to-remember mission or vision “statement”?

• Do you have substantially less than a 100 percent chance of achieving the BHAG yet at the same time believe your company can achieve the BHAG if fully committed?

• Would you be able to clearly tell if you’ve achieved the BHAG?

The best BHAGs make you think big. They force you to engage in both long-term building and short-term intensity. The only way to achieve a BHAG is with a relentless sense of urgency, day after day, week after week, month after month, for years. What do you need to do today, with monomaniacal focus, and tomorrow and the next day and the day after that to defy the probabilities and ultimately achieve your BHAG? If you’re going to put a powerful computer in every pocket, or eradicate malaria, or give every kid a solid K–12 education, or cut crime rates by 80 percent, or render impotent the dark forces of terrorism, or build the most admired company in your industry, or accomplish whatever the goal might be, you cannot possibly achieve the BHAG in mere days or weeks or months. The best corporate BHAGs require 10 to 25 years of relentless intensity to achieve.

Employees can articulate the following key components of the company’s strategy accurately. You want all employees to align their actions with the strategy of the company. To do this, they need to know and understand the company’s 10- to 25-year goal (BHAG®); who the core customers are; the three Brand Promises everyone needs to keep; and what the company does — and be able to explain it when asked (the elevator pitch).

1. Core Values: the handful of rules defining the culture, which are reinforced through your People (HR) systems on a daily basis.

1. Core Purpose: the top leader’s regular stump speech to keep everyone’s heart engaged in the business.

3. Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG®): the 10- to 25-year goal that provides constant context for all of the decisions made throughout the organization.

1. Priorities/Themes: a handful of three- to five-year, one-year, and quarterly priorities, which require repeated review on a daily and weekly basis to keep them top-of-mind.

WHAT you sell to WHOM and WHERE), Brand Promises, and the Profit per X and Big Hairy

Audacious Goal (BHAG®)

This can be particularly disorienting if you thought success would make you eternally happy or fill your life with meaning, only to discover that it does neither. Achieving success or accomplishing a huge goal (whether personal or public) does not answer the question of what to make of a life. In fact, it can have the exact opposite effect, forcing the question back to the center of your existence, to be addressed anew.

In my previous research into the question of what makes great companies tick, my colleagues and I observed a prevalent precursor to corporate decline: the post-BHAG stall. BHAG (pronounced “bee-hag”) stands for “Big Hairy Arduous Goal.” In Built to Last, Jerry Porras and I discovered the power of having a BHAG to galvanize an organization, acting as a powerful mechanism to stimulate progress. But we also discovered that companies can become adrift and on the verge of decline after achieving the BHAG. To avoid this trap, a company needs to have an enduring reason for being (its core purpose) that acts like a star on the horizon, forever chased but never reached no matter how many goals the company achieves.