Have you got a documented BHAG as part of your business plan? If so, then your business plan is probably doing your organisation more damage than good.

Now, maybe you’ll get lucky. In fact, I’m probably being too harsh – after all, there’s a good chance most of your team don’t even know what’s in your business plan. And what they don’t know won’t hurt them.

I don’t just loathe BHAGs because of how ugly that combination of letters are. They’re a classic example of private companies ‘copying the wrong homework’, trying to do something that a thin sliver of the world’s greatest organisations sometimes do in the hope that it’s a crazy idea on a wall that will change their business, rather than, you know, actually doing the hard yards themselves.

Don’t take my word for it – in this week’s episode, I take you through the research into BHAG application in small to medium businesses, and the 3 categories of companies where they fail … sometimes making a bad situation worse.

If you’ve never heard of a BHAG before, count your lucky stars – watch and learn why you want to avoid the cult of the Big Hairy Arsed Goal (often called the Big Hairy Audacious Goal, as if that makes the word BHAG less grotesque).

And if you’re a lover and a defender of the BHAG, and you can’t bear to have its reputation besmirched by this bozo on a blackboard – then watch and learn the one, very rare, type of company where having a lofty moonshot goal may, and I stress MAY, just work.

 

Originally authored by Jacob Aldridge.