Let’s break that frame
My BHAG rules for you as you do your New Year Resolutions:
- Your BHAG should be a real challenge with a 60-75% chance of successful achievement.
- Your BHAG should force a steep learning curve.
- Your BHAG should create sustainable change not ‘one time achievement’.
- Your BHAG should serve others.
- Your BHAG should make YOU happy
- Your BHAG should be Long term.
- Your BHAG should create urgency.
- Your BHAG should require a change in your game.
- It’s the journey, not the destination.
My Friends, as we come into 2015 it’s time to start thinking about new goals or new projects for the New Year. Let’s lay down some framework to make that easier and more effective, shall we?
It’s a bit of cliché that we settle back on the first of the calendar year and try to come up with ways we are going to create positive change in the next 12 months, isn’t it? In the past I have railed against the whole process. I have argued that what makes January first any different than any other day? If you need to create positive change in your life why wait? Why create artificial calendar rules to do it?
Shouldn’t positive change be woven into the fabric of your life? How does waiting until the first of January while you’re nursing your hangover make it any easier? Given the abysmal record of most New Year’s resolutions we could confidently state that this whole thing is just another form of self-deception and procrastination.
But, instead of being the grumpy old guy and being all negative on the process, I’m going to jump on the bandwagon this year like every weight-loss program does. Let’s assume this is a great time to make decisions. Decisions on habits and goals and all those other things that make your head swim.
It’s true. We have down time this time of year. The intensity of our careers drops away for a couple weeks. We find ourselves in our own homes surrounded by our own families and it is indeed a petri dish for the cultivation of positive introspection. Let’s go with that. Let’s double down. How do we create real and compelling life change in the New Year?
If you’re following and listening to me this probably isn’t your first rodeo with positive change and goal setting. The issue we get to is we push the positive change over the years incrementally. We expand to the edges of our personal universe each year.
Maybe last year you started that exercise program and ran those races? The year before that you lost some weight and went to couples counseling? The year before that you stopped biting your nails and read a couple books.
Were those really life changing? Yes and no. They were incrementally life changing. They were life changing within a set box. Maybe you nudged the edges of your comfort zone. Maybe you pushed against the frames of your life’s construct like a mime in a pretend box. But, how do you break that frame. What can we do this year to create real change?
We need a vehicle that will stretch us, change us and force us to learn. We need a thing that will pull us out of our comfort zone. We need a Big Hairy Ass Goal. That’s right, a BHAG.
What’s a BHAG in this context? The BHAG isn’t a new idea, but it was popularized by Jim Collins in his business books, most notably “Good to Great”. In his world view he was talking about how companies set goals that drove transformational change in organizations and institutions. That was where BHAG’s entered into the pop-consciousness.
We can leverage this concept to break our frames. Let’s use the BHAG as a vehicle or even a placeholder for that notion of positive change in our lives and let’s set that BHAG now in the new year.
What are the rules for finding a BHAG that creates positive transformational change in your life?
First, it must be a real challenge for you, but achievable. It can’t be something that has a 100% chance of success. That won’t challenge you. For example, last year I ran a marathon a month for 13 months. You might say that is a transformational goal, but for me it really wasn’t because I knew with 98% certainty that simply running 26.2 miles once a month was pretty easy for me.
This is a big trap to avoid when defining your BHAG called “more of the same”. If you simply set a goal to do more of something that you are already doing, how does that stretch you? If I had never run a marathon before, running a marathon a month would certainly be transformative, but for me it was ‘more of the same’ and there was very little risk of failure.
What is the right percentage of uncertainty that you want? The simple answer is that your BHAG should have a 60-75% chance of success. That’s a good challenging goal. It’s risky enough that you’ll really have to stretch and change to achieve it but not so hopeless as to be emotionally unattainable.
If you set a goal that has only a 10% chance of success you won’t be able to commit emotionally to it. It’s too far out of reach. It may seem like a linear logical assumption that the crazier the goal the more growth you’ll get out of it, but this isn’t true. When the probability of success drops too low you disconnect from the goal and it ceases to have the power to pull you.
60 – 75% success is still quite a challenge and will take courage to commit to.
Second, when you select a BHAG of the right size and shape for your universe it will force you to learn new things. To achieve the BHAG you’ll spend some time on a steep learning curve. This will result in personal growth.
Again, selecting something you’re already an expert at makes for a less effective BHAG. This is the ‘more of the same’ comfort zone again. If you’re not forced to learn, if you don’t feel like a new comer in a strange and scary land, you didn’t design the right BHAG,.
Third, we are looking for something that will drive life change, not point achievement. The BHAG that you set must change you forever not just be a one off. Your BHAG must result in permanent changes to your capabilities, knowledge and lifestyle. Achieving that BHAG or even attempting and failing should create sustainable change.
This is why I don’t like ‘bucket list’ goals, because they are one and done. Bucket list goals are more like holidays. Sure, you can pat yourself on the back and look at the great selfies you took on top of that mountain you climbed, but did it change you? Did it make you a different person?
Fourth, In order to be an even more worthy BHAG it should server others, not just you. This can simply be the venturi effect of your own change cascading to others in your circle of influence. Meaning that, because you did this thing you have inspired others to be pulled into your wake and caused positive change in them and the world as a result.
The BHAG can be overtly about someone or something else. We have all seen people who have caused positive change in their own lives by embracing the causes of others. How does your BHAG change not only your world, but the world of your stakeholders?
Fifth, your BHAG needs to make YOU happy. Don’t make the mistake of assuming someone else’s cause or goal. This is a pale substitute and will not inspire great change in you. Don’t do something because you think it will make someone else happy. Don’t do something because someone else told you that you should.
In order to be intrinsically motivating your BHAG needs to make you happy, however you define that.
Sixth, your BHAG should have a longer term timeframe. It should look ahead 5 or 10 years into the future. Not just this year. This will break you out of the trap of thinking too small. True positive change is a long term equation.
Seventh, your BHAG should create immediate urgency. A long term BHAG will paradoxically create urgency. You might think having a goal for 10 years out would not be urgent. The opposite is true. By making it a long term goal it necessarily is a BIG goal and the size of that goal 10 years from now will scare the hell out of you and force you to get working on it now!
The only way to achieve something so big is to become obsessed and maniacal about it right now, today.
The eighth key element is that your BHAG should require a quantum step in your own capabilities. What does that mean? It means you’ll have to change the structure of your approach. The methodology or organization that you leverage to achieve the goal will be different than you are used to. You’ll have to change your game, because if you choose the right BHAG you don’t have the tools in your current tool box to get there.
Ninth, it’s really about the journey not the destination. The BHAG is just a convenient metaphor, a vehicle and a psychological hook for you to define the positive change you want to see in your life.
Let’s review. My BHAG rules for you as you do your New Year Resolutions:
- Your BHAG should be a real challenge with a 60-75% chance of successful achievement.
- Your BHAG should force a steep learning curve.
- Your BHAG should create sustainable change not ‘one time achievement’.
- Your BHAG should serve others.
- Your BHAG should make YOU happy
- Your BHAG should be Long term.
- Your BHAG should create urgency.
- Your BHAG should require a change in your game.
- It’s the journey, not the destination.
Enjoy the ride.
Chris,