“You can only grow your business as fast as you
grow the skills of your employees, and a scalable
operating system is key to sustaining growth.”
3. CREATE YOUR BIG HAIRY
AUDACIOUS GOAL
In the research that became their book
Built to Last, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras
discovered that the best companies had
identified a goal that they developed and
pursued over time, a goal so challenging
that they did not know how they would
accomplish it, but nonetheless, they were
inspired to figure it out. The authors called
this goal a “Big Hairy Audacious Goal,” or
BHAG for short.
an impact. Red Balloon decided that if
10 percent of Australians had received
a Red Balloon day gifting experience,
that would prove it. So they set their
BHAG as providing two million gifting
experiences at a time when they’d sold
less than ten thousand experiences. With
a large scoreboard in their office tracking
experiences, they achieved their BHAG
and are now resetting to a higher goal.
4. CREATE AND
YOUR STRATEGY
COMMUNICATE
There is enormous power in creating a
BHAG. A strong BHAG reaches out and
grabs people, energising and focusing
them. People “get it” right away. It takes
little or no explanation. A classic example
of a BHAG was John F. Kennedy’s
challenge to the US people to “put a man
on the moon and return him safely by the
end of the decade (1960s)”. At the time,
many thought it was an impossible goal,
and the technical details hadn’t been
worked out yet. However, it was a clear
and powerful challenge that captured
people’s imaginations. The goal was
achieved. Strategy is a creative process, not a
one-time event. In today’s business
world, creating strategy is like building
a bridge as you’re walking across it. It’s
a dynamic process that follows a think/
plan/do/adjust cycle which continually
uses market feedback to confirm the
strategy’s success. So that you get a
broad perspective and avoid group think,
expand the planning team to include
talented people beyond those on your
executive team. This creates learning
and development for them and leverages
their deep understanding of the business
which will improve the strategy.
A great business example of the power
of a BHAG is the Australian company
Red Balloon. Red Balloon provides
gifting experiences to people, and their
core purpose is to change gifting forever
in Australia by providing experiences
rather than providing stuff. They wanted
a measure to confirm they were having Secondly, you must continually revisit
your strategy to ensure it’s working. My
suggestion is to create a strategic thinking
team who meet for one hour a week (think
breakfast or lunch) to review changes in
the marketplace, competition, technology,
and the like. Don’t discuss day-to-day
operations challenges; reserve this time
Richard (Rick) Holbrook is a Trainer and Certified Coach
with Gazelles International. He works with CEO’s to help
them create an executable growth strategy that everyone
in their company understands and is aligned with. Rick
has worked with more than 70 companies in Western
Canada since leaving the corporate world in 2004.
for strategy. Then, every ninety days,
revisit your strategy in a quarterly plan-
and-review meeting.
Strategy is essentially about placing the
right big bets (and avoiding the wrong
bets). Your team must learn what makes
a great bet versus a merely good bet.
Remember, a good strategy violently
executed today is better than a perfect
strategy next week.
5. EXECUTE YOUR PLANS
All the previous four actions will be for
naught if you don’t put in place a system
to execute on the “important but not
urgent” in your company. Strengthening
your execution system will likely req uire
you to streamline day-to-day tasks so you
can create time for the important. You
can accomplish this by putting in place
an effective company-wide meeting
framework that reduces meeting bloat.
Once this framework is in place, you
can improve execution by creating
and transparently sharing priorities
and by having teams hold each other
accountable for completing their priorities
and pitching in to help should someone
start to fall behind.
Also remember the 80/20 rule. Twenty
percent of your efforts will give you 80
percent of your results, so ask yourself,
what can you do to make that 20 percent
more successful? To grow sustainably,
you must be relentlessly focused on doing
what you committed to do. u
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SPRING 2018
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