The Powerful ASK Triangle of Success

How many of us are aware of the proven driving force for our success in life, both personal and career / business wise??

The Powerful ASK  Triangle of Success is the right answer.

While A stands for Attitude, S and K stand for Skills and Knowledge respectively.  

A winner is the one who recognizes his God given talent, works his tail off to convert this into skills, and uses these skills to accomplish his Goals

Larry Bird, well known American basket ball player

The quote highlighting the need for the skill

The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering the attitudes in their mind

William Jones, 19th century American psychologist, historian, philosopher

The quote highlighting the need for attitude

Attitude to be nurtured and developed and practised, Skills to be learnt and practised while knowledge is acquired through education, reading and listening. Attributes for each category is given on their respective side is clear and apparent. You have plenty of schools, colleges, universities to offer knowledge but no recognised institution offering skills and attitudes. The reasons being education can be learnt with maximum class room learning, while skill development and attitude are exclusively learnt through practise  

Instead of analysing each apparent attributes and category, I have analysed the phenomenal success of few selected industrialists / investors / entrepreneurs (provided in the following table) from India and US based on those categories and attributes. I have selected the leaders born between 1863 and 1971, over a period of 100 years to establish the strong presence of the categories importance. In spite of globally changing business environments, the prevailing categories has proved their time tested existence.   

Industrialists / Investors	Period	Knowledge /Education	Specifics of Attitude / Skills	Effect on the Company / Empire
Henry Ford	1863 – 1947	Schooling	Tough Negotiator, Leadership, Task Master	Established Role Model in Auto Mobile Manufacturing
Jehangir Ratanji Dadbhoy TATA	1904 – 1993	Formal	Visionary Leader	Company Assets from USD 100 Million to USD 5 Billion
Dirubhai Ambani	1932 – 2002	Schooling	Good Negotiator, Tough Leader, Great thinker, Visionary	From a Gas station employee to USD 2.9 Billion in 2002
Steve JOBS	1955 – 2011	Schooling – College Drop out	Visionary, Innovative, Creative, Good Leader, Task Master, Think Different Initiator	Raised his personal worth to USD 10.2 Billion in 2011
Gautam Adani	1962 – Current	Schooling	Task Master, Visionary	From a salaried  employee to USD 129.9 Billion worth in 2022
Elon Musk	1971 – Current	Formal with Basic Graduation	Aggressive Leader, Task Master, Visionary	Personal worth of USD 242 Billion in 2022

Out of the above achievers, Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy TATA a second generation Parsi business man, descendants of early Indian settlers of Persian priests from Persia.

While we look at these achievers, we realise the least impact of education in their business life that were predominantly dominated by skills and attitude. Their skills and attitude were the drivers of their amazing results on multiple platforms.  But this may not be true for all who are graduated from colleges. The importance of college education and marks obtained are essential for service class of people and their growth in their respective organization, entirely depends on their skills and attitude to reach senior management professionals. The increased level of education could only result in higher entry level, while their growth in the organization still depends on other two parameters. While I have analyzed a few entrepreneurs there are plenty of start ups and midlevel out there who have succeeded in their lives too. I happened to work for one such company in Africa during my career days, where the company owner was just a matriculate and built an empire worth of billions of USD in 30 years period and continued to grow.

The various studies indicate the necessity of knowledge is 15% while for the other two is 85% combined and this shows the importance of skills and the attitude. As the explosive use of attitude and skills increases the necessity of education could be lower as well. Another important fact is that we can outsource the knowledge front, while for the of attitude and skills has to be absolutely in house. A small thought advise of Steve jobs “Be hungry and be foolish” has plenty of attitude built in it that led the company to greater heights and reached the top spot as best brand company. 

I conclude not to worry about lack on education or grades but completely focus on your skills and attitude in order to achieve your passions and goals of your lives. The results are 100% guaranteed for success.