Business Mastermind Groups

An excellent vehicle to really get your team moving and working together in a productive and cohesive manner is to develop a MasterMind Group.

This is a super way to get the team working not only together on the goal, but in the most innovative and creative spirit possible. This process has been around for a long time, but has only recently gotten energized, and is actively being used by team leaders to charge up and increase the productivity of their teams.

A MasterMind group is defined as a group of like minded people coming together to work toward a common outcome. Napoleon Hill first wrote about, and described the MasterMind Group principle in his well known book Think and Grow Rich.

He had learned of this secret from Andrew Carnegie who had a MasterMind Group surrounding him totaling 50 people. Those 50 people are credited by Carnegie with helping him to amass his great fortune in the Steel Industry.

How does this phenomenon actually work? What are the secrets of putting one of these groups together? Is there a certain mix of skills or attitudes that is recommended? Well, the truth is that the group should have some structure certainly, and it should have member skills according to the mission being undertaken. But, there are actually few hard and fast rules published for putting one together.

First, the group must have a leader. Now, the leader may be elected by the members, or the leader may be the team member that initiated the process. It is also possible that the leader may be appointed and instructed to form the team, and to undertake a project, in which case the MasterMind Group formation may be the choice of the project leader.

What matters is not who the leader is, or how the leader got the position, but whether the rest of the team will trust and demonstrate confidence in the leader. If the answer is positive to this question, then there are no other real obstacles to getting right into the mission.

Now, a couple thoughts about the other members of this group, to ensure a good skill set mix for the team. Lay aside the desire to have skills related to the mission. We expect the team members to be possessed of those skills by virtue of being in the company.

There is probably a technology person, an engineer, and a finance person on the team or maybe the team will have an entirely different makeup due to the nature of the mission. Accept that someone in the executive offices made sure whatever skills necessary for the mission are present. It is a wholly different makeup for the team that really needs thought at the initiation stage and the forming of the MasterMind Group.

In fact, the team leader may need to recruit some members for this MasterMind Group to ensure the dynamic needs are met.

This set of abilities and attributes next described is good to have in any group, but critical in the MasterMind Group. Here is a short description of each of those attributes, and each attribute must be found in at least one team member. (Hopefully the team will not be over represented in one attribute, and under-represented in another. If so, the team leader will need to go recruiting.)

A facilitator is the team member that ensures the program keeps moving, and is someone that gets things done by encouraging others. A practical thinker is the team member that keeps the team stable, and grounded in the here and now, and keeps the team focused on the mission. Every team needs a numbers person to keep track of the resources, work hours, and dollars and cents. (This is the team member we secretly call the bean counter. If the truth is told this is the team member that keeps the team on budget, and ensures that the company’s money is being properly accounted.) Every job needs a creative thinker to dream up all those special ideas that are innovative, and jazz up the outcome. (But, don’t get too caught up in these dreams, they can kill the team timeline and budget.) This next team member attribute is hugely important to the team and the mission, the strategist. This team member is looking to the future and thinking about the outcome, and continually assessing the plan to ensure it is heading to the solution originally intended. Finally, there is the star of the team, which is that team member that has the energy, vision, and creativity to be able to get nearly any, and all problems worked out.

When all those attributes are brought into a singly focused group determined to develop a strategy, or plans of action to get something done, a rare phenomenon will often occur. They will meld themselves into one synergetic being that is greater than the sum of all their individual talents and abilities. Consider the analogy of a load being pulled by one horse compared to a load being pulled by a team of two horses. One horse can pull a load of 1,000 or 1,500 pounds, but two horses can pull upwards of 5,000 pounds. The power is multiplied by the team. Develop a MasterMind Group and give them a big mission to accomplish and if they meld, great things can happen.

Ken Wallin is a retired US Army Officer, and a Senior Project Management Professional. He has more than 35 years leading in both military and consulting positions. He currently is working on his PhD in Business Administration specializing in International Business at Northcentral University. Ken writes about management, leadership, and team building.