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It’s the start of 2024.  You made a list of resolutions.  You wrote out personal, professional and/or business goals.  You sketched out a plan of action.  And determined company leaders have set out to tackle a big hairy audacious goal.   Also known as a BHAG, a big hairy audacious goal is a term referring to a clear and compelling target that an organization tries to reach.  It was coined in Jim Collins and Jerry Poras’ book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies.  Like many resolutions and best laid plans, ‘Big Goals’ are ambitious and in the back of your mind, perhaps even thought to be unrealistic and unachievable.  However, as the Bannister Effect demonstrates, often the biggest limiting factor in achieving a Big Goal is thinking that it can’t be done.  So, what is the Bannister Effect and what does it teach about setting and achieving goals?

Understanding the Bannister Effect

“The Bannister Effect” refers to the mental shift that occurs when a significant barrier is broken, demonstrating to others that what was once thought to be unachievable is, in fact, possible. The challenge itself has not changed.  The only thing that changed is the way we think about that challenge.  It is named after runner Roger Bannister.

Before Sir Roger Bannister ran the first four-minute mile in May 6, 1954, people thought this feat was beyond human ability.  Although people tried and tried, it had not been done until Bannister, the 25-year-old medical student from London, pulled it off in England in 1954 while running against gale force winds (a little mentioned fact).  Then, just 46 days after Bannister shocked the world with this achievement, John Landy beat Bannister’s record by nearly two seconds.  And then they raced one another, and both finished in less than four minutes.  Within two years, nearly a dozen runners ran a sub four-minute mile.  This is now referred to as the Bannister Effect.  A goal once thought impossible, once achieved, results in many more achieving that goal in relatively short order.

The Bannister Effect in Action

The Bannister Effect has been witnessed time and time again in not just sports but many different endeavors. 

Example 1 – The annual Nathans 4th of July hot dog eating contest challenges participants to eat as many hot dogs as possible within a certain amount of time.  The time has varied, but from 1982 until now, participants had either 10 or 12 minutes, depending on the year.  In all the years from 1982 to 2000, the most hot dogs anyone could eat in 10 or 12 minutes was 25.  Then, in 2001, Takeru Kobayashi (a 100 lb man from Japan) ate 50 hot dogs, twice as many as any previous year.  He won the contest six years in a row.  Then, starting in 2007 through this year’s 2018 event, an American named Joey Chestnut won every year but one. More importantly, the number of hot dogs has steadily risen also. At the 2021 Nathans Stoney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest, Joey Chestnut broke his own world record and ate 76 hot dogs in 10 minutes.  So, while the world record was 25 hot dogs eaten in 10 minutes until 2000, it had nearly tripled to 74 by 2023.

Example 2 – The Bannister Effect has also been witnessed in baseball.  The single season home run record stood at 27 for 35 years until Babe Ruth came along. He then proceeded to set a new high four times in eight years. His Major League home run record was established the first time in the 1919 season when he hit a ball out of the park 29 times for the Boston Red Sox. That plateau was considered at the time an “unreachable mark” until the following year (1920) when he smashed his own record by going deep 54 times.  Then, he beat that record a year later (1921) when hit 59 homeruns.  A few seasons passed and the 1920 record seemed locked until Ruth hit 60 homeruns in just 151 games in 1927. That record lasted 34 years until Roger Maris hit 61 homeruns in a season in 1961.  Then Mark McGwire hit 70 homeruns in 1998 and Barry Bonds topped him with 73 in 2021.  Clearly, the Bannister Effect proved true repeatedly.  Would anyone a century ago have even conceived that a baseball player would one day hit 73 homeruns in a single season?  And, yet it happened.

Example 3 – The Bannister Effect has even been witnessed in such things as video games.  There is a community that plays competitive Tetris, a Gameboy video game that premiered 34 years ago.  Tetris came free with the purchase of a Gameboy so many people played this game. It was basically a game of fitting geometric figures together within a certain amount of time.  In competitive Tetris, players make lines and tetrises at incredibly fast speeds.  But there existed what was considered the “holy grail” of Tetris achievement referred to as “the true kill screen”.  Until recently — in 34 years of people playing — this had never happened.  A true kill screen happens in extended game sessions when the Tetris NES code is tripped up by a byte-overflow error, resulting in a crash.  That means it happens because the creators of Tetris never imagined in their wildest dreams that anyone would ever get that far in the code, at those insane speeds.  So, upon a certain trigger, the code fails and causes the game to freeze.  But on December 21, 2023, a 13-year-old competitive Tetris player who goes by the name Blue Scuti achieved this feat, which had until then been considered “impossible”.

What does this entail?  According to PC Gamer, to do this, a player needs to engage in “about 40 minutes of high-stakes Tetris where the player has to be laser-focused, employ physically demanding techniques with pinpoint accuracy, get past levels with invisible blocks, then clear only one single line at a specific moment.”  In other words, it is a mentally and physically demanding feat.  Blue Scuti did it and uploaded the video of his achievement to YouTube on January 2, 2024.  But what is most interesting about Scuti’s achievement, however, is what happened next.  Two more people – fractal161 on January 3, 2024 and P1xelAndy on January 4, 2024 – achieved the same feat days later.  So, while no one accomplished this feat for 34 years, three people were able to achieve it within weeks of one another. 

Business is Dotted with the Bannister Effect

What applies to runners, gamers and contestants also applies to leaders running organizations. In business, progress does not move in straight lines. Whether it’s an executive, an entrepreneur, or a technologist, some innovator changes the game, and what was thought unreachable becomes a benchmark for others to exceed.  That is the real legacy of Roger Bannister’s achievement and a lesson for anyone who has set a Big Hairy Audacious Goal of doing things that haven’t been done before in 2024.

Case in point.  In 1954, Bell Labs unveiled the first functioning transistor, revolutionizing electronics and paving the way for miniaturization and the Information Age. Within a decade, integrated circuits and microchips followed, propelling technological advancements at an astonishing pace.  Until that time, computers had been thought of as unwieldy, massive machines limited to big corporations, governments and universities.  Only futuristic television programs even imagined the possibility of a small personal computer in the 1950s but by the 1980s, it was a reality.  With one single achievement, hundreds of innovations piggybacked on the miniaturization breakthrough leading to the eventual creation of the desktop computer, laptops, and eventually iPhones and wearable computers like the Apple Watch. 

Another example of the Bannister Effect happened in 2008 when Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin white paper introduced the idea of a decentralized digital currency based on blockchain technology, shaking the financial world. It was a completely new form of virtual money untethered to any government or financial institution, operating entirely peer-to-peer, with no need for banks, governments or intermediaries like PayPal or Visa to make monetary transactions. Suddenly, the possibilities of blockchain technology exploded, leading to a wave of cryptocurrencies and innovations in decentralized finance and use of blockchain for other applications.

These examples highlight a powerful dynamic.  When one breaks a perceived barrier, it sparks a chain reaction, inspiring and empowering others to reach even greater heights. This has profound implications for business leaders and goal setting.

Use the Bannister Effect to Fuel Business

1. Set audacious goals.  Don’t be afraid to push boundaries. Just like Bannister aiming for the “impossible” goal of running the mile in under four minutes, challenge a work team with ambitious targets that stretch their comfort zones. These stretch goals create a motivating tension, forcing innovation and breaking ingrained assumptions.
2. Embrace the ripple effect.  Recognize that exceeding expectations can set off a chain reaction. A success story can inspire others in the industry, prompting everyone to up their game, leading to a collective leap forward for the entire ecosystem.
3. Celebrate milestones.  It’s not always about the finish line: Breaking down a massive goal into smaller, achievable milestones keeps momentum going and provides opportunities to celebrate progress. Acknowledge achievements along the way, reinforcing the belief that the bigger goal is within reach.
4. Foster a growth mindset.  Cultivate a culture where challenges are seen as opportunities to learn and grow. Encourage experimentation and risk-taking, creating an environment where failure is simply a stepping stone towards the next breakthrough.

The Bannister Effect should serve as a powerful reminder that limitations are often self-imposed. By setting audacious goals, embracing the ripple effect, and fostering a growth mindset, business leaders can unleash the potential within their teams and spark a wave of innovation that propels the organization to new heights. Remember, sometimes, the only thing standing between you and your impossible dream is the audacity to believe it’s possible.

Quote of the Week

“The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.” Michelangelo

© 2024, Keren Peters-Atkinson. All rights reserved.