Early in my executive career, I hated annual planning season.
Long-range plans felt like corporate theater. Endless spreadsheets. Incremental budgeting exercises. Pretending we could predict the future with precision three years out.
Then we began a transformation that shifted my perspective.
Our Jim Collins inspired BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) was simple to say, but incredibly difficult to execute:
At the time, less than 20% of our revenue was recurring. We wanted to flip that entirely on its head. Over time, 80%+ of revenue needed to become recurring with one-time implementation revenue supporting the product, not custom consulting.
That single vision forced us to rethink everything.
Gross margins needed to move from roughly 50% to 75%+. Implementation timelines had to shrink from 16 weeks to 8 weeks. We needed to move down market to expand TAM and shorten sales cycles. ASPs came down, but sales cycles dropped nearly 40%.
The BHAG itself was not the breakthrough. Breaking it into measurable operational steps was.
First, we introduced formal Long-Range Planning (LRP) tied directly to annual operating plans. We reviewed the LRP before annual planning discussions. Next, we moved to monthly all-hands meetings with the explicit goal of connecting the long-term vision to current execution. Finally, we shifted our weekly ELT meetings towards leading indicators, operational metrics, and accountability against targets. That enabled us to take the once almost overwhelming BHAG and break it down into meaningful chunks of change with associated metrics and measures of success.
Over time, the organization stopped viewing the transformation as a future aspiration and started seeing it in their day-to-day work.
That visibility mattered.
For some team members, it quickly became clear the future company was not a fit for their individual goals and desires. And that’s ok. For others, the clarity created excitement and ownership. Those are the ones who became our change agents and propelled the business forward.
A good BHAG should force hard decisions, expose operational gaps, and create measurable accountability between today's execution and tomorrow’s vision.
The companies that successfully transform are usually not the ones with the boldest vision. They are the ones willing to continuously measure, iterate, communicate, and adapt until the organization eventually looks up one day and realizes it has in fact become something different.