Matt Hancock needs a ‘big, hairy, audacious goal’ for test and trace

Stanford Business School professors, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in their book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, introduced the idea of the ‘big hairy audacious goal’, or BHAG. A BHAG (pronounced ‘bee hag’) is a bold, clear and compelling target for an organisation to strive for, with the appropriate resourcing. A great example was President Kennedy’s speech to Congress in which he said ‘this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth’. This audacious goal committed and motivated NASA and its suppliers to deliver a massive step up in performance.

Matt Hancock showed the power of a BHAG with his target of 100,000 Covid tests a day for England by the end of April. Prior to that, the number of tests had shown insufficient growth. The audacious and very public goal, which attracted much scepticism when it was set, energised the NHS and Public Health England, and ended up delivering a fivefold increase in testing capacity (along with some creative counting of postal tests) to meet the target.