Big Hairy . . .

Came across a term yesterday that I’ve never heard before, but absolutely love:  Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs). 

Authors Jim Collins and Jerry Porras coined the phrase back in 1994 for their book Built to Last. 

They wanted a term that vividly conveyed the excitement, energy, and envelope-pushing boldness stirred by very ambitious goals.  BHAGs help build a great organization by:

Getting you out of thinking too small.
Creating a sense of urgency.
Making people loyal to the goal and not the leader.
Becoming the beacon and inspiration that makes a business more durable.

“If you thinking standing at the top of the cliff is where the joy is,” Jim Collins told Inc. Magazine, “you don’t understand [BHAGs].  The real joy is in all the pain and growth and suffering and creativity required long before you get to the summit.”

So, that is what I learned yesterday.  Today, the BHAG idea is reinforced with an example from this date in history. It’s the story of one of the most successful, eccentric, and mysterious men in American History.  A man who lived Big Hairy Audacious Goals:  Howard Hughes.

Howard Hughes was a successful Hollywood movie producer when he founded the Hughes Aircraft Company in 1932. This guy was bad-ass.  He personally tested cutting-edge aircraft of his own design and in 1937 broke the transcontinental flight-time record. In 1938, he flew around the world in a record three days, 19 hours, and 14 minutes.

Following the U.S. entrance into World War II in 1941, the U.S. government challenged the Hughes Aircraft Company with the mother of all Big Hairy Audacious Aviation goals: to build a large flying boat capable of carrying men and materials over long distances. There was just one big hairy problem — a lack of war-time steel.  So what does Hughes do?  He evaluates the situation, checks all his resources, and takes a different direction.  He decides to build his aircraft out of wood laminated with plastic and covered with fabric. Although it was constructed mainly of birch, the use of spruce (along with its white-gray color) would later earn the aircraft the nickname Spruce Goose.

This behemoth was SO massive (wingspan of 320 feet and was powered by eight giant propeller engines) and took SO long to build, the war had ended by the time the Spruce Goose was completed.  Still, Congress that Hughes prove the plane airworthy. So, on this date in 1947, Hughes obliged by taking the prototype out on the historic test flight.  It flew, sort of.  But in the eyes of Congress, the Spruce Goose laid an egg.

Howard Hughes refused to neglect what he saw as his greatest achievement in the aviation field (after all, it was built to last).  It’s reported that until his death in 1976, he kept the Spruce Goose prototype ready for flight in an enormous, climate-controlled hangar at a cost of $1 million per year. 

So, what’s your Big Hairy Audacious Goal?  What are you doing to see it take flight? On this date in history, Howard Hughes piloted one of his —the largest aircraft ever built— on its first and only flight.

Today, the Spruce Goose is housed at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.