Thus Spaketh Idd Salim

You decide. The rest is noise.

And here we are, little boys and littler gals. Big boys and big gals. My friends and friendettes. My haters and haterettes. My wannabes and wannabettes.

7 days to end of 2011. My personal success-rate is 45%.

For every 10 things I was involved in, 4 failed. 3 worked 100% and the other 3 are either ongoing or postponed, but not failed.

In each failure, each disappointment, each postponement, I made sure I got a lesson from it. Ofcourse, I could be all Kenyan and be like “Mungu hanipendi” or “Hii no sababu ya Arsenal” or “This happens to everyone” or ‘These deals ni za watu wana connections” or “Ni hawa clients washenzi sana” or any of the 72 commonly-used Kenyan excuses for failing. Alternatively, I could ask myself : “Where did I fail?”. And it is in this question that I found the best answers.

Accepting responsibility. The project failed because of ME. My laziness. My postponing. My lack of focus. Not the delayed payment. Not Safaricom. Not power. Not lack of hot water in the shower. Not that mosquito. Me. And that brings us to lesson 1.

Blame yourself {“always” | “most of the time”}

Always. This will make you push yourself further. Make sure your work is done. And a huge chuck of theirs. I found myself in a project where we were 8 people, working in 3 teams. My team had 2 people. We made sure our work was done. But had nothing to show, still, because our chunk was 40% of the project.

What to do? Wait for teams B and C to finish, lazily and un-interested like they were, or do THEIR part for the common good. We chose the later. We did work for A, B and C. Project worked like a charm. Teams B and C were praised and paid for their part. Me and my team-mate just smiled. But the project was delivered. That is what mattered.

It is easy to say, “tumemaliza part yetu, ni hao wamebaki”. Makes you feel good and fast. These other teams are the weak links. BUT to the project and the client, 40% is not 100%. The client wants 100%. Who did it is irrelevant. Internal team wrangles and delays should be hidden from the client. Blame yourself, even if you are not to blame.

Achana na ball

I remember going to Unix-Guru Kelly’s lair with my Old Dual-Core 4 GB Ram laptop. It had an Arsenal sticker next to the Keyboard. Nice and sleek. “Toa hiyo sticker Salim”, he ordered. I started thinking: “Well, this is Kelly, and I worship him as far as Unix/Linux is concerned. But who the hell does he to think he is, to tell me to remove the Arsenal sticker? My beloved Arsenal.”

“You don’t know how many deals umenyimwa, after a good demo and presentation, just because of that sticker.”, he said. I was enlightened. Arsenal si yetu. It is just a weekend hobby.

Well, call it whatever your silly brain feels like. My team, My identity. This is what/who I am. All that bullshit. But as soon as your wise/business brain wakes up, you will realize that MAYBE, just MAYBE, it was that silly football tweet on Sunday, that made your not get ONE signature on your contract.

For employed people and pussies who do  not use their real names or avis on twitter, this is not an issue. But for a brand and a hustler, it is a BIG issue. Insult Arsenal/Man U/Chelsea once and you will keep wondering why hamshindi grants, why ile contract hai-signiwi. Why kindergarten-code Company X got the deal, and you did not. It is fun to tweet and have a few followers retweet. But the ramifications are far-reaching.

Leave the Dog-fight to the Dogs

It was on a cold Saturday night. I was with Buju driving from Rongai, back to Zimmerman. I received a call from someone who Identified themselves as Robert. He stated that the Rwandese Government was hiring Hackers from Kenya to hack anti-government websites and wanted to know if I was interested. I respectfully declined.

Little did I know that I had created an enemy, by practicing my  right to say NO. The rest is history. Tweets. Blog posts. Matusi. Etc.

And you will notice. Anytime I meet a pest on twitter, arguing about ball, Mac vs PC, Gals vs Vaseline etc, I always let them win, unless we are talking FACTS and NUMBERS. Some people are programmed that once you toa ONE point, they immediately result to insults and get all personal.

I let the dogs do the dog-fight. I am too elite for that. I am Salim.

Clean up as FAST as possible. Make your plate empty.

Out of every 3 small-money and boring projects that I did, I was passed by one BIG and Lucrative project. Lucrative and rewarding in terms of money, exposure, purpose and intellectual challenge.

It is a very sad thing to look at a project, know it will take 4 days of focus to finalize, you tell the client it will take 4 weeks, and then 2 months later, there are some unfinished bits of that system. I will not get into why this happens and how to solve it. It is well talked about here.

Lesson: Give the project the respect it deserves and FINISH it. It will give you the time you need to do the others. Again, if you are GOOD enough, alot of projects will come to you. Don’t assume a project will do itself. get in there and FINISH it.

Only you can do it

This fact cannot be over-emphasized. Only you can decide whether you fail or succeed. Simple as.

I failed in my application for membership at the iHub, and so I will not be going there anymore. Ofcourse, this has pros and cons, but I believe what I will miss in on-site presence will be over-shadowed by what I will gain in productivity. This is a good thing, I think.

Back to code.

Wazi.