Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG)

Pronounced BeeHag. There's a lot of potential jokes here that are likely to get us flagged on certain firewalls. So let's skip it and move onto the real definition.

Authors James Collins and Jerry Porras coined the term "big hairy audacious goal" to describe a company's most ambitious long-term objective. It first appeared in their 1994 book Built to Last. Collins says he had to talk Porras into the name. Porras favored something more staid, like "corporate mission."

The BHAG forces a company to look into the distant horizon and establish a mission for itself. Not a tactical signpost or a profit target. The ideal statement would galvanize the purpose of the operation and help shape the overall direction of decision-making.

In the book, Collins and Porras use JFK's moon-landing promise as an example of good BHAG. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy publicly stated that the country should commit to landing a person on the moon by the end of the decade. The authors argue that this had a much more motivating impact than a less specific statement of intent, like (quoting their suggestion for a lamer alternative): "let's beef up our space program."