Big Hairy Audacious Goals: Envisioning a Smart Grid Future

Kate Rowland | Jun 07, 2010

 

In the late 1980s, James Collins and Jerry Porras embarked upon a research project at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business to investigate the question: Why are some companies able to achieve and sustain success through multiple generations of leaders, across decades and even centuries?

Six years later, they published their findings in the book Built to Last. One of the concepts they uncovered was the tendency for successful companies to have what Collins and Porras identified as BHAGs—Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals—or an “audacious 10- to 30-year goal to progress towards an envisioned future.”

The authors further describe it this way: “(it) engages people—it reaches out and grabs them in the gut. It is tangible, energizing, highly focused. People ‘get it’ right away; it takes little or no explanation.”

The phrase has been broadly taken up by business coaches far and wide in the decade and a half since the book was published. Even its pronunciation, “bee-hag”, doesn’t roll off the tongue smoothly; rather, it sounds both bold and jarring. And it’s high time, in my opinion, that we all quit trying to come up with the ultimate definition of the phrase “smart grid” and start agreeing on some BHAGs.

In late May, a panel at ConnectivityWeek attempted to do just that. Now, in all fairness, less than an hour isn’t a lot of time in which to do so. Porras and Collins spent six years identifying companies that had good BHAGs. But panel moderator Chris Hickman took a good shot at it, and challenged three highly esteemed panelists and the audience to take a crack at it themselves.

First at bat was Nick Sinai, the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) new energy and environmental director. Sinai helped to author the FCC’s newly released National Broadband Plan. He began his BHAG by reading snippets of Chapter 12 of the plan, covering energy and the environment. The six long-term goals listed there, he opined, were a good start. And then he added Goal 7. “By 2025, one million homes or buildings should be able to economically and cleanly microgrid for up to one week at a time,” Sinai said.

Second up was John McDonald, director of technical strategy and policy development for GE Digital Energy. McDonald noted that two foundational technologies need to be in place for smart grid to work. First, he said, an underlying communication infrastructure needs to be in place. “It’s the enabling technology that allows us to automate…to be able to automate, you have to communicate,” McDonald said. Also important, he said, is an IT infrastructure: “We have to get data from the operational side over to the IT side.”

He offered up two BHAGs. First and foremost, McDonald said, is empowering the consumer, and “making sure whatever we roll out, the education comes first….We need to enable the utility to have demand response as a negative generator, and renewable generation, to maintain system regulation.”

A second BHAG on the distribution side is also necessary, he said: “There are 48,000 distribution substations in the U.S., and only about 20 percent have automation in them.”

Third up was Chris Irwin, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) smart grid standards and interoperability coordinator. Irwin was pinch-hitting for originally scheduled panelist Eric Lightner, the DOE’s director of the Federal Smart Grid Task Force. And Irwin definitely came prepared with a BHAG.

“I would like to see us make energy American,” he said. It’s simple, bold, audacious, tangible and energizing. While it may be a “devil in the details” BHAG, I’d say it’s definitely a BHAG.

So, assuming all of these are at least single-base hits, the bases are now loaded with BHAGs. Next up at bat was Hickman, tasked with the job of bringing them all in.

“I would issue a challenge of simplicity,” he said. “One that says, ‘give me a break.’”

Hickman went on to explain that this challenge comes from a desire that we stop exploiting our differences and start exploring similarities. “We need as a group to strive for simplicity, in measurements and in standards,” he said. “Folks, give me a break: we do billions [of dollars] in financial transactions. You mean to tell me we can’t handle meter data?”

And finally, the challenge to the audience, and to this readership, also from Hickman: “We have to envision a future that is different than the one we have propagated for the past 100 years.”

Anyone want to take it up? What’s the ultimate smart grid BHAG? Did any of the above ideas resonate? Did anyone hit it out of the park? What are we missing?

I look forward to discussing this issue and others connected with the growing intelligent utility with you. Please feel free to comment here, or to e-mail me at krowland@energycentral.com