Is Mastering Technology Enough To Succeed? Author and Business Consultant Shiv Khera unveils his upcoming works and why values matter more in today's time.

Globally, 50 percent of businesses fail within the first five years and in the US, 90 percent businesses fail in the first five years. With the speed of change, products are getting obsolete the day they get launched and knowledge is getting obsolete within two-three years.

It has become a cliché "the only constant is change". Going into the future the only people who will succeed who master three skills:
(i) People skills

(ii) Persuasion skills

(iii) Prioritizing skills

Why?

People Skills

More than business problems, we have people problems. When we take care of our people problems, most of the business problems are automatically resolved.

We are hired for our skills but fired for our behavior.

The lower a person is in life, most of his time goes in technical skills, and very little goes in people skills. The higher a person goes in life, it just reverses. Technology and Technicians we can always buy with money, but the wealthiest person must build relationships.

Why do you go to a doctor 10 miles away bypassing ten other doctors on the way? Is he the most qualified? Probably not! Something says that I am dealing with a right person. And what is that something? It is the trust factor.

Unfortunately, today's generation has become very comfortable with technology, but they have become uncomfortable with people.

Persuation Skills

It means the ability to influence, convince, negotiate and sell. Some of the most successful people in
the world also had great persuasion skills.

What are all of them doing?
1. A candidate at a job interview
2. A boy and girl proposing to get married
3. A lawyer arguing in front of the judge
4. A politician giving speeches to get votes

Aren't they all persuading? People keep talking about the sales as a. B2B b. B2C.

But every sales boils down to P2P - People to People. People like to deal with people they like.

BOTTOM LINE IS EITHER GET PROFESSIONAL OR GET OUT
Professionals realize that in life, results are rewarded, efforts are not. We judge ourselves by our intentions but the world judges us by our actions.

Priorotizing Skills

Prioritizing skills are embeddedin our core values. The number oftime saving devices we have today,
are more than what we ever had.Yet, we don't have time to do the things we need or want to do. Why? Because, we forget to prioritize.

We need to distinguish between:

1. What is urgent and what is important? Urgent may or may not be important and the reverse is just as true. But whenever we ignore what's important, it converts into urgent. Example, health is important. Exercising every day is important but if I skip it one day, it's not the end of the world. But, if I ignore it long enough, guess what will happen? It will convert into urgent. Same thing is true with relationships.

2. What is negotiable and what is non-negotiable. What we would stand for and what we would stand
against.

3. We need to distinguish between making money vs. earning money. Unfortunately, most people only
want to make money, very few want to earn it. Remember only good people are assets, rest are liabilities.

Are you working on any new book at the moment?

I am working on two books right now. One is on the lines of You Can Win. The proposed title is Achieve More. Primarily, the purpose behind this is we live by design not by default. Another book I am
coming out is on positive parenting, which is very crucial today all over the world. Many times I am called by schools, colleges and parents to talk to kids. Their values are messed up, discipline is messed up and my answer is they are not messed up, parents are messed up. Today's parents are actually scared of their kids. They don't have the guts to say no to their kids. And that is sad.

This article first appeared in the Indian edition of Entrepreneur magazine (April 2016 Issue).