When Napoleon Hill asked the great steel magnate, Andrew
Carnegie, “To what sir do you owe your success?” Carnegie immediately responded,
“I owe it all to my master mind alliance.” (emphasis added) Carnegie continued, “I personally know almost
nothing about the making and marketing of steel, but in my employ are men who
know everything there is to know about the making and marketing of steel.”
Much of Hill’s research organizing the world’s first philosophy
of success centered on the effective use of “master mind alliances” by the
great success stories of his day including Carnegie, Henry Ford and Thomas
Edison, among many others.
A master mind alliance involves gathering around you a group
of like-minded people, sharing similar aims and aspirations, who can help you
to achieve your own goals. Such an
alliance may be as formal as a board of directors or as informal as regularly
confiding in and seeking counsel from a spouse or other close acquaintance. A group of people regularly and intently
focused on solving problems and achieving specific goals will usually produce
better ideas and plans, leading to better outcomes, than any single person
acting alone.
It’s a clear manifestation of the old saying “two [or three
or four] heads are better than one.”