The big hairy audacious goal

Collins & Porras · 1994

Also known as BHAG

A single long-range goal clear enough to need no explanation and large enough to change the company on the way.

Its place in the frameworkGoal Core›Long term goals

What it does

It is defined by a horizon of ten to thirty years, a finish line anyone can recognise, and a genuine risk of failure. The mechanism is commitment: a goal that cannot be quietly reinterpreted three years in has to be either pursued or abandoned in public.

Reach for it when: When long-term goals keep coming out as this year’s plan with a bigger number on it.
Where it stops: It rewards clarity over correctness. A company can commit to a vivid goal for twenty years and be pointed the wrong way for all of them.

James C. Collins & Jerry I. Porras, Built to Last, HarperBusiness, 1994.

Why it sits at Long term goals

The far horizon: where the organisation intends to be in years rather than quarters. Long term goals give the short ones a direction to point in, and are the first thing to go missing when a company is busy.

A model is only useful when you reach for it at the right moment. This one answers a question that arises here — so it is filed here, and nowhere else. These are the working areas it serves:

Long-range ambitionCollins & Porras on the long-range goal: a clear finish line, a long horizon, and roughly a seventy per cent sense that it can be done.
Growth horizonsThe three-horizons model set out in The Alchemy of Growth (Baghai, Coley & White).
Direction of growthAnsoff’s growth matrix, still the clearest way of distinguishing four quite different kinds of bet.
Assumptions and scenariosScenario-planning practice, developed at Shell, on rehearsing several futures rather than forecasting one.

All of Long term goals

What it touches elsewhere

Nothing in a business is decided on its own. A conclusion reached with this model at Long term goals lands in these other cores, whether or not anyone follows it there.

Vision CoreThe vision describes the future state; long term goals are the measurable steps into it.
Market CoreDirection of growth is a claim about markets, and has to be checked against them.
Time CoreMarket timing and golden opportunities decide when a long goal becomes reachable.

Filed at the same place

These answer questions that arise at Long term goals too. Where they disagree with this one, the disagreement is the useful part.

Three horizonsSeparating the business you are running from the one you are building and the one you are only betting on.

Elsewhere in Goal Core

These are other people’s models, named here so you can go to the source and use them properly. The Omnigoal is not affiliated with their authors and is not endorsed by them; nothing of theirs is reproduced here — no canvas, no diagram, no wording. Each is described in our own words, with the originator credited, because the framework is a place to put thinking, not a replacement for the people who did it. Model names and trademarks belong to their respective owners and are used here only to refer to the work itself.

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