The Nairobi scene, as described by Valentine Muchiri, is modelled to reward the hustler. Kenya’s president ran for the top seat using the very word — hustler.
The word can give false meanings. It’s like the Swahili word — lenga. The grammatically correct version means “to aim”, but the slang version means “to avoid”. Our daily lives are not a lesson in correcting our Swahili, and so the slang version prevails.
Hustler has the same side effects. From the popular hip-hop songs, it represents the person who will work tooth and nail to realise their goals. Ambition-driven. Meek Mill sang about the praises of a real hustler in a hustler environment:
They gon’ love me for my ambition.
That defines the Nairobi culture. Everyone is out to make a quick buck, even during the nationwide demonstrations. The grizzly incident when the riot police, without coercion, shot an innocent bystander selling facemasks to the Kenyans, shows the kind of risk Kenyans can go to make money.
Truthfully, it’s not making money. It’s finding a means to pay the bills. We often choose to stay in our various jobs not because we enjoy them, but because we have to pay the bills. And we need to eat. Food is a big motivator. Sometimes pride takes the helm. The fear of looking like a failure is another. So everyone hustles. The adult Nairobian, born or naturalized, is a hustler in this regard.
That is not the definition my senior consultant gave me when I was almost completing my internship. A hustler, so he said, was someone who engages in shoddy business deals. They care less about the letter of the law and more about the execution of their word. Hardened hustlers kill to have their way. Whatever he was hinting at was clear to the ones who accompanied him during that morning ward round.
Indirectly, he described the kind of people who play to win. Most of these players don’t get to feature in the leaderboard. The podium is small. It can’t fit all the hardworking individuals. Regardless, the common narrative told by the winners is their hard work. That’s taken as the method to get to where they are, again, despite the small podium. Unknown to the ones singing their praises is that hindsight is always 20–20.
So players play to win, oblivious of the game or the rules, with the unmalleable story that you have to work hard. This is the story we were sold in school. My high school teachers told us, at every instant, that the four years were the only time when I would slave. Thereafter, life would be smooth. People would seek us to work for them, not the reverse. The story made efficient sense — sacrifice four years for a lifetime of nirvana. Four years of laziness could translate into a lifetime of hard work with little pay. The better option was obvious.
We didn’t know the game. We were players in a game that works with different rules. I should have noticed it during the visiting days, when most of us were never visited by our people from back home. It became clearer when I completed my internship. It was never a case of what your brains could get you.
The archetype is that of success-to-the-successful. In Kenya, at least, the academic performers are the ones who get praise and adulation. Once they get into the job market, their school successes have little chance of securing that job opportunity. It’s a sad state of affairs because they resort to the same method, hoping it will add an extra shine to their achievements, whereas the rules of the game change after school.
It’s often counterproductive. If you haven’t met the qualifications for the position, the feedback is that you’re underqualified. If you have made the cut, because you went back to school, the narrative is that you’re overqualified. But those who occupy the positions you would have otherwise made a good fit for don’t leave those seats. Like Thomas Shelby, they work because in this world, there’s no time for them to rest.
Players continue to play, hoping for a win. Few wins come. Most don’t. The ones that come distinguish the transitional difference between playing to win and winning to play.
Winning first
Unknown to the hip-hop world, D Smoke joined the first Rhythm and Flow Netflix series. That was the foot in the door. He then played to win, as most of us do, until he got to the finals. His last performance was deserving of the win. The creativity became the highlight of all his songs.
After winning the first season of Rhythm and Flow, more wins continued to flood his entry into the global hip-hop scene. After the release of his first album, he got the Grammy nod, nominated for the Album of the Year. Sadly, he competed against another rap god, Nas, who clinched the award.
But D Smoke’s name was no longer just that of a high school teacher. He was a Grammy-nominated rapper. He may not have won, but he stood on the podium for all eyes to see. On a relative basis, that was a win. And that gave him a chance to play even more, with an increased surface area for more wins.
Winning first keeps the cogs of playing better greased. Success to the successful applies outside school differently from how it worked while in school. In Kenya, at least. And the effects exceed generations. A successful man or woman will likely have their success spill over to their children and those who come after them. Generational wealth works because the archetype works.
Winning first is like rigging a die. It often lands on the winning face. What’s more is that winning gives you room to fail. You can take a hit. You won’t die because of a single failed incident. Multibillionaires can lose billions and still sleep with more billions in their assets.
Winning to play is what the casinos do. The house always wins, and so it can continue playing the game. Casinos’ gameplay differs from the players trying their luck inside them. You will hardly read a book about casinos, but the bestsellers will be about the poker players.
Most readers will not know how many poker players have lost money. But they will read about the ones who won. The authors will mention how they lost thousands or even millions of dollars, but eventually continued playing. They have room to play and several buffering layers, enough to fall and get up. In this regard, they are similar to the casinos.
Annie Duke is one of the more famous poker players. I’ve read some of her books. Readers of these works, myself included, may not initially appreciate that the winners had room to fail. They are some of the few winners who got a chance at the podium, and that created space for more exploits. Because they won, they could play more. The narrative sold to the players leaves out this crucial detail. The players don’t have this room to win. The risk is higher.
It’s why I will never believe in the maxim — high-risk, high-reward. It’s false. Howard Marks gives us a better definition of risk. Risk is not volatility. The ones who won may or may not have taken crazy risks, but that cannot be used as the sole reason for the bountiful reward. If that were the case, then everyone would have been taking high risks. What’s more, winners get to tell the story. Not the losers who got lost in history. History is written by the victors. History has few victors.
America’s and Britain’s Got Talent are celebrated worldwide because of what they do — they make the talented ones win. Once they have won, they can play more. Winners play a different game. The game is rigged to have winners win even more, an example of the Mathew Effect in its coat of many colours.
Herbert Simon didn’t like the fact that he won the Nobel for the sole reason that most people would agree with his every thought. Nobody challenged him. This is like the billionaire flair.
The world takes billionaires’ words as more truthful and reliable than any other. Case in point — the AI investments. Since billions have been thrown at it, everyone believes that it’s the next revolution. Follow the money, wherever it leads. But if nobody is around to check these bold steps, history predicts the same fate — collapse.
Billionaires have already won. Anyone who isn’t stinking rich has already won and so they can continue playing. The wave of everyone embracing AI tries to follow the same steps, but you may put a lot of investment into it, with marginal returns. Billionaires can take the hit. They have room to fail. They win to play. But those who don’t have that money barely have room to play. They play to win.
Knowing where you stand can improve clarity of choice. If you’re playing to win, you may need to better position yourself to reduce your downsides. Those who have won can play more, with reduced downsides, because they can win, but more importantly, because they can afford to lose. Most players can’t.
What I’m trying to say is…
Eat, Smoke, take your time, it’s a long dinner…
Because playing to win is different from winning to play.
Players have to continue playing to win. Hoping to win. But they might not. Hope is not a strategy.
But once they have won, they continue structuring and positioning themselves to continue winning, so they can continue playing.
Players have little time, space, or resources to play the long game. Winners do, knowing that they will eventually win. VCs sponsor various startups cause they know that one of them will yield more returns than all their failed investments. They win to play, while the startups play to win. And more startups fail for the same reason.
High-risk, high-reward mostly works for the winners. Not the players. Know where you stand.
PS: This idea was inspired by conversations with internationally recognized creative strategist Ian Kariuki, late at night, at the casualty section of Coptic Hospital.
This song inspired some of the lines used in this article. It features D Smoke, one of my favourite rappers, at the final performance, which catapulted him to fame. Source — YouTube