BHAGs Through Martins Lens
Martin neither embraces nor dismisses Big Hairy Audacious Goals, he interrogates them. A BHAG is a Winning Aspiration: box one, not the cascade.
Three tests:
1. The Opposite Test. "Become the most innovative company in our industry" fails, nobody aims for the reverse. Kennedy's moonshot passes: the USSR had not committed to a crewed lunar landing; the opposite was a defensible choice.
2. Draw the line downward. Work the Strategy Choice Cascade beneath the aspiration. If the required choices are identical to current choices, the BHAG is decorative.
3. Compulsory trade-offs. A real moonshot forces you to stop something. If nothing is deprioritised, it is addition, not ambition.
The Aristotle point (The Aristotle Distinction): a moonshot is a legitimate act of imagination, the error is pursuing it analytically, decomposing it into annual OKRs where only the measurable (hence incremental) survives, degrading the ambition while keeping the poster.
What he respects: aspirations that are uncomfortable, imply trade-offs, and are tethered to a plausible argument (What Would Have to Be True). See also Corporate Purpose.
Seam with the OKR system: the same caution shapes Aspirational Targets, label the stretch, grade success by learning (Retrospectives), and never let quarterly decomposition eat the ambition.
Our synthesis of Roger Martin’s published work, sources credited. Read the originals: they’re excellent.
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