Page 36 - HBR Leader's Handbook: Make an Impact, Inspire Your Organization, and Get to the Next Level

26 HBR Leader’s Handbook

This boldness is important because it is what inspires, what serves as a
North Star for people throughout your organization. Jim Collins and Jerry
Porras describe what they call BHAGs, or “big, hairy, audacious goals”:

All companies have goals. But there is a difference between merely
having a goal and becoming committed to a huge, daunting chal-
lenge—such as climbing Mount Everest. A true BHAG is clear and
compelling, serves as a unifying focal point of effort, and acts as a
catalyst for team spirit. It has a clear finish line, so the organiza-
tion can know when it has achieved the goal; people like to shoot
for finish lines. A BHAG engages people—it reaches out and grabs
them. It is tangible, energizing, highly focused. People get it right
away; it takes little or no explanation.

Consider the vision of the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston,
Texas. Its vision is “to make cancer history,” which has the double meaning
of developing breakthrough science (historical new discoveries) and eradi-
cating cancer altogether. It resonates with researchers, clinicians, and an-
cillary workers, as well as donors, patients, and family members. It’s also
memorable and vivid—and certainly bold. Its boldness has spawned more
than a dozen specific moon-shot programs in different clinical depart-
ments to make significant advances in reducing mortality and suffering on
specific types of cancers in defined periods of time.
Of course, your team may not have a vision at the scale of eradicating
cancer or eliminating global poverty, but to be effective, a vision must still
be significant relative to the day-to-day work of the team. At AIG, for in-
stance, Seraina Macia currently runs a unit called Blackboard Insurance
that is seeking to improve commercial underwriting by developing artifi-
cial intelligence and data analytics to reshape the whole process and, by
extent, the industry itself. Similarly, the human resource team of a large
corporation that we know formulated its vision around making the com-
pany one of the top five places to work in the United States and a preferred
destination for graduates of engineering schools.
For the most compelling visions, going bold doesn’t mean financial
success, but rather striving for an exciting contribution to customers or to