Big Hairy Audacious Goal

A Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG), coined by James Collins and Jerry Porras in Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, is a long-term goal that's both ambitious and inspiring — challenging an organization to think beyond its current capabilities and pursue something genuinely significant, not just an incremental improvement target.

Time horizon and character

Typically set for a 10-to-30-year horizon — a clear, compelling statement of the organization's ultimate purpose or mission. It needs to be specific enough to be measurable (eventually, at that scale — not necessarily trackable week to week), yet broad enough to inspire and motivate stakeholders across the whole organization: employees, customers, and investors alike.

Real examples

• Google: "Organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."
• Microsoft: "A computer on every desk and in every home."
• Amazon: "Be the world's most customer-centric company."

Each is specific enough to actually guide strategic choices (Google's BHAG explains why it built search, then maps, then countless other information-organizing products) while broad enough to still apply decades later without needing rewriting.

What it's for

A BHAG provides long-term direction, guiding strategic decisions and resource prioritization, and rallies employees around a shared purpose — inspiring creative, ambitious thinking specifically because the goal is set beyond what current capabilities could achieve without real stretch and innovation.

Setting one well

A BHAG needs to be genuinely challenging and inspiring — but also realistic and ultimately achievable. One set too far into pure fantasy becomes demotivating rather than inspiring, and can undermine performance rather than driving it; the "audacious" part has to feel like a stretch, not an impossibility.

Relationship to a North Star

A BHAG operates at a much longer time horizon and a higher level of abstraction than a North Star metric — a North Star is typically a specific, trackable number an organization optimizes over shorter cycles; a BHAG is the multi-decade purpose statement a North Star metric (and the Objectives and Key Results beneath it) ultimately serves.

Common pitfalls

• A BHAG that's actually just a big number, not a purpose — "double revenue in 10 years" lacks the inspirational, mission-level character a real BHAG needs; Amazon's and Google's examples are purpose statements, not just growth targets.
• Setting a BHAG that's unattainable even in principle — demotivates rather than inspires, and can create cynicism about goal-setting more broadly across the organization.
• No connection from the BHAG down to nearer-term execution — a BHAG with no North Star metric or Objectives and Key Results translating it into trackable, shorter-cycle work stays an inspiring poster, not an operating strategy.

Learn more

• Collins & Porras, Built to Last — the originating text.
• North Star for the nearer-term, directly trackable counterpart.
• Vision Mission Values for the related but distinct vision/mission/values framing.