In his 1994 book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, management guru Jim Collins introduced the concept of a Big Hairy Audacious Goal. A BHAG (pronounced “bee hug”) is a technique for driving progress by setting clear, possibly unrealistic goals and relentlessly pursuing them. Collins had Boeing's 707 race in mind, but he applied the concept more broadly. Climbing Everest is a classic BHAG. So is putting a man in space. Some executives might find the term anatomically offensive and prefer to sprinkle their PowerPoint presentations with True North and North Stars, Manhattan Projects and Marshall Plans, and, above all, moonshots.
Zillow Group CEO Rich Barton likes Collins' way of thinking. “I think big, difficult, audacious goals are really motivating and inspiring,” he says. Barton founded the online travel agency inside Microsoft in 1994. Five years later, he attended a meeting with future CEO Steve Ballmer, asking for a $100 million marketing budget. Ballmer laughed at the young executive and kicked him out of the room, but later approved a plan to take Expedia Group public. Barton eventually left Expedia to tackle the housing market. His first attempt, a plan to sell homes at auction, failed. But in the process of pursuing it, he and his co-founders came up with a better idea: tracking home prices like stock prices.