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Does everything stupid that comes out of Tom Peters' mouth become a standard business buzzword?
The "B-HAG," or so-called "Big Hairy Audacious Goal" is a particularly fascinating one to me right now because it has gained currency among a relatively small, but definitely significant group that I am close to. A couple years after Tom made it part of the corporate zeitgeist, these folks have discovered it, and are putting it to work. They've undertaken to identify some B-HAGS, and set about getting busy to achieve them. This, I find curious.
Nobody -- not even I -- would be in the least surprised to find corporate executives spewing unspecific and imprecise Peterisms instead of defining precisely a long-term goal for the firm. Nor are the goals themselves (grand and hirsute) surprising in any way: there are a million goals to be had in any situation and any one of them will do, I suppose. No, what's interesting is that this group of people has taken on the B-HAG in all its semantic glory. Let's parse the B-HAG and consider the implications.
Big -- Well, enough said. Big is . . . well . . . big. Nobody has any trouble -- at first -- getting big. What happens after the glow of goal-setting is over and everyone leaves the meeting or retreat or facilitated strategy session is another matter altogether. I'm sure we've all seen, "the native hue of resolution / Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, / And enterprises of great pitch and moment / With this regard their currents turn awry, / And lose the name of action.
Hairy -- This is the "Tom Peters-ing" of the idea. I guess "Hairy" is to connote gorrilla or Sasquatch-like size and such. It has absolutely no meaning other than that unless, of course, the goal is being set by the executive at Super-Clips.
Goal -- I'm skipping a word to get this equally obvious one out of the way. The goal is the objective, the end, the purpose, the desire. Without it -- the noun -- there is nothing except a bunch of adjectives. And, while they add marvelous colour, adjectives are not things. We need things or we have no-thing.
Here it is. The money word. The adjective that actually means something and has significance in this phrase. Audacious. I love it. It's a great word: sounds spectacular in the string, with a vague sense of the outlaw or charismatic devil to it. It has the sound and feel of defiance and affront about it. The rebel with a cause. Here's where I have the most problem with the B-HAG in most corporate instances though.
Consider the meaning of audacious (from the OED): "1 daring, bold. 2 impudent." If anybody can point to any group of executives, anywhere but especially in an old, established, large and bureaucratic firm, that hasn't had any genetic or pre-disposed audacity bored or beaten out of them, I'll pay for the information. The entire notion of audacity is counter-corporate. It's as romantic as the idea of "Rambo," the lone-wolf, renegade, or maverick soldier. Soldiers -- and successful corporate executive -- do not act impudently. Those that do, do not become (successful) corporate executives or senior officers. Although I suppose impudence is as much in the eye of the beholder as would be daring and boldness, I think they are substantially different things. No matter.
Of course the scale is the thing. What constitutes daring and boldness to one might be pedestrian to another. Again, long-successful, large and established, bureacratic, F500 firms are typically, by their very nature, political and incrementalist. Neither characteristic is consistent with boldness, daring, or impudence. No act of boldness, even if successful, goes unpunished.