Rocks: Breaking Down Your Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals
For years our team has set “BHAGs” (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals) in order to push ourselves to achieve things we didn’t know were possible. A BHAG is an idea that author Jim Collins created in his book Built to Last. He identified that great companies set Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals. BHAGs are a bit too far out of reach to easily achieve and while many do not actually reach their BHAGs, it pushes them to do even more than what they think is possible.
As you can imagine, BHAGs are big and it is daunting to have a huge goal without knowing how to reach it. It is important to have a team that trusts your leadership and each other in order to try reaching these big goals. Since 2015, our team has broken down our big goals into what we call “Rocks”. We imagine the BHAG is a huge boulder and we break it down into smaller rocks in order to achieve the greater goal.
Our team meets each quarter to set Quarterly Rocks. We did this in a recent staff meeting. Involving our whole team in this process is one way we keep the goals in the forefront. We take our BHAGs for the year and assess what specific goals we need to reach each quarter in order to achieve the BHAG by the end of the year. These specific goals are our Rocks. Then we break the Rocks down even further into a handful of tasks for our team members to complete that quarter. We assign tasks to specific team members and reassess our progress at the end of the quarter. It has also been helpful for us to do a monthly update on our numbers as we track toward our goals - this also helps our team stay involved in the process.
Do you regularly set goals for your business? Maybe you could try creating Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals that will motivate you and your team to reach new heights. Remember to break those big goals down into Rocks that you and your team can carry together. Good luck!