Big Hairy Audacious Goals

According to Wikipedia, the concept of a Big Hairy Audacious Goal, or BHAG, was first proposed by James Collins and Jerry Porras in a 1994 book called Built to Last. The point is to get a unifying vision for a 10-30 year goal around which your people can unite. Something big. Something hairy. Something audacious. A worthy, exciting, stretching goal. 

The authors presumably put forth this idea as something a company can unite around. But an individual can have a BHAG, too. In fact, it was another individual in my church who introduced me to the idea. He has two BHAGs: the first, to become a doctor, and the second, to open a hospital in a foreign country. He is currently an undergraduate with his sights set on medical school. I believe he would agree that having this overarching vision provides motivation to his day-to-day studies. He doesn't feel aimless in the midst of the details. 

You can have a BOHAG - a Big Overarching HAG - and intermediate HAGs along the way.

One of my BHAGs is to eventually become a professor of law. To do that - and I'm making this up as I go - I believe it will be helpful to become an expert in some area of law, and to begin to publish in that area. In what should I become an expert? I want my choice to be an area of the law which intersects with concerns of interest to the Church. In America it seems that many of the cases of interest to the church deal with First Amendment law. I took First Amendment as a class in law school and did well. Accordingly, to First Amendment law I go. 

In pursuit of my BHAG, my intermediate BHAG is to write a book and get it published. Something along the lines of the history and significance of the First Amendment from a Gospel perspective. Lots of research to do. Lots of thinking to do. Lots of praying to do. Lots of conversations to have. Lots of reading. And writing. 

I used to blog quite a bit. I left off doing that as I went to law school. I didn't have the time. But if I am going to write a book, Lord-willing, then I need to start knocking off the rust. Readers, welcome.