My BHAG 1 2 - over the next 2 years to make a collaboration movement unstoppable- it twins capitals cities with a future in youth jobs creating summits until the whole movement has more voice and value than the olympics

Some of our partners in this first predicted this would be the seminal Net Generation challenge of the 2010s in 1972 - so developing their curriculum on a platform similar to khan academy's is Our "action goal" which will help youth mediate our impact goal

Note from the past- dec 2006 comment on whether microcreditsummit was at crossroads

The phrase BHAG – Big Hairy Audacious Goal was proposed by James Collins and Jerry Porras in their 1996 article entitled Building Your Company’s Vision. A BHAG (Bee-HAG) is a form of vision statement “…an audacious 10-to-30-year goal to progress towards an envisioned future.”

“A true BHAG is clear and compelling, serves as unifying focal point of effort, and acts as a clear catalyst for team spirit. It has a clear finish line, so the organization can know when it has achieved the goal; people like to shoot for finish lines.” (Collins and Porras, 1996).  Collins and Porras also used this concept in their book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies.

In the Microcredit Summit report, Harvard Professor Jim Kim, a major figure in international health and co-founder of Partners in Health with Dr. Paul Farmer, described how the late-Dr. Jong-wook Lee, past Director General of the World Health Organization, adopted the “3 by5″ campaign in 2004, a campaign to provide three million people living with HIV/AIDS with life-prolonging antivetroviral treatment by the end of 2005.

Everyone counseled Dr. Lee against adopting such an audacious goal out of fear of failure.  But Dr. Lee committed himself and the World Health Organization anyway.  When Dr. Lee was asked, “What will you say if you don’t achieve the goal?” he would answer, “Blame me.”  Dr. Lee and the World Health Organization promoted the goal relentlessly and measured progress every six months.    Even though the goal wasn’t reached, their efforts resulted in a commitment to universal access to antiretroviral treatment by 2010 by leaders at the 2005 G-8 Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.

Bold goals are not for the faint of heart.  Expect many to respond that while it’s good to be ambitious, a particular goal might be unreachable or possibly unstrategic.  However, as Grameen Foundation President Alex Counts reminds us, “There were similar arguments made in 1996 that setting a goal of reaching 100 million of the world’s poorest families with microcredit was unrealistic and/or poor strategy, since progress was unlikely to be that fast and the tools to measure progress unreliable or too expensive to be practical across thousands of institutions.  Those fears have proved to be unfounded in the case of the 100 million goal–indeed, the goal catalyzed accelerated progress and innovation…”

Measuring Progress

A vision without a task is but a dream.  A task without a vision is drudgery.  A vision with a task is the hope of the world.

- from a church in Sussex England

Setting bold goals without making a credible effort to measure progress is, at best, a meaningless gesture.  But there are other advantages to goal setting and measurement, not the least of which is bringing obstacles into clear view.

Removing Barriers

Another key to a good strategy is to identify the Key Success Factors.  Look at each of these and determine which of these areas are being insufficiently addressed and require breakthrough thinking and action to bring your vision to fruition.  Then identify initiatives, set goals, and measure progress.  The important benefit of making metrics very visible is that it keeps everyone focused on the critical few things that need to be done well.  Human nature tends to pull us towards the trivial many things that we like doing, or that we are good at, or that give us a sense of accomplishment but are not essential to moving us closer to achieving our goals.