A Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal (BHAG) is a challenge to align the business behind; leveraging content expertise, decision-making ability, and accountability. Employees might not know how they’re going to get there, but at least they know the direction in which they are going.
A leader drives system-wide, enterprise change. This gives employees permission to think about what is possible through a process that stimulates ideas, then supports and translates the investment into a tangible value. This requires people with the right skills.
Google’s innovative culture is 10X thinking, “the more difficult the challenge, the more we want to work on it.” To succeed at this, they start small, then build bigger. When hiring, they look for General Cognitive Ability (GCA) instead of GPA. They coined this term “googleyness”, as they sought curiosity and lifelong learners who were humble, curious, and conscientious. The Economist Group worked with Google to identify the top skills needed in the workplace, and found them to be: problem solving 51%, team work 33%, communications 26%, and critical thinking 21%.
“The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined efforts of each individual.” Vince Lombardi
Contrast this with NASA, which tried working across cross-disciplines; leveraging technology-enabled and collaborative research. This was organizationally and culturally incompatible, due to turf battles among independent researchers. Resources allocated to one project meant they were not available for another, and this fueled conflict between managers. Zero-sum.
How do you find the people with the right skills to innovate BHAG’s?
