No Runny Eggs

After over two decades of work with large wireless companies, you can bet that I’ve been exposed to nearly every main stream theory or philosophy on change management that has existed. Do this, don’t do that. Encourage these people, use a stick on those people etc. etc. While I don’t buy all of the theories, I have to admit that I did learn a few things from the training and put that knowledge to work in some of my current engagements.

One theory that was not precisely a change management technique but has application there is call a BHAG. A BHAG is a Big Hairy Audacious Goal. The BHAG was popularized by James Collins in his book “Good to Great.” Collins used a BHAG as a goal that an organization could focus on. While they may have been so large that they weren’t always attained, they provided a focal point for everyone in the organization to measure against and see if the work they were doing or the plan they were looking to implement, moved them closer to or further away from the BHAG.

The translation of a BHAG for use in change management worked like this. Let’s say you had a company that typically saw sales growth of 5% annually. Let’s also say that you needed to improve on that and get to 10%. In many institutions, a change like that will be met by numerous people who tell you how and why that growth can’t be achieved. Knowing that that would occur, on a few occasions, instead of saying we wanted to grow by 10%, we’d say that we wanted to grow by 20%. Upon saying that, we would get the same group of folks telling us how and why we couldn’t achieve that growth. We’d then sit down and put a plan together with our teams for achieving 20% growth. At the end of the plan, the same people who were complaining at the start were typically still complaining. Once we completed the detailed plan we’d come back and tell folks that after taking the input, 10% is a more attainable goal. In nearly every instance, once we let them back to 10%, people would let out a collective “Whew,” and move forward executing on the 10% plan which is what we wanted all along.

By using the BHAG approach, we went through the same caterwauling and planning that we would have gone through had we originally set a 10% target. But, by using the BHAG, we allowed people to expand the belief in their own abilities beyond that what they otherwise thought they could do. If we had started at 10%, it would have been very likely that we ended up with a plan that had 6% or 7% growth.

What’s this got to do with anything?

President Obama has invited Senate and House leadership to a televised meeting to discuss Placebocare. Ostensibly, President Obama wants to find a way for the Republicans and Democrats to “come together” and pass a plan.

Folks, there is nothing about this plan to like. Short of starting all over, there should be no negotiation of any kind.

I’m afraid that the Republican leadership will not have the spine or knowledge of their own principles to stand up to this takeover of health care. I’m afraid that what could happen is that Obama views the current plan as a BHAG, that he might come back and offer a couple of Republican carrots; say something like, “we’ll look at tort reform,” or “we’ll look at more competition across state lines,” without any commitment to actual legislation. The problem with this is that if the Republicans allow this line of discussion, they will get caught in the BHAG trap and end up looking like the losers of this event.

I was discussing this concern with Birdman today and he had the perfect approach to avoiding the BHAG trap. Read the next post to see if you don’t agree with his approach.