I can't remember what year I did my first Lake Taupō Cycle Challenge, but I remember being bloody cold.
The 160 kilometre ride around Lake Taupō is hard enough without the weather turning against you, and that particular morning it must have been less than five degrees, with mist and a gentle drizzle that had settled in for the day.
You start the ride with a decent climb out of Taupō, which at least gets the blood moving, and I was actually feeling pretty good when I realised I had a slow puncture.
I should have stopped immediately, but I was riding strongly and didn't want to break my momentum. Anybody who has done endurance sport will probably understand the strange logic involved. You know perfectly well that the problem isn't going to fix itself, but because things are going well right now, you keep going.
Eventually, of course, I had no choice.
By then I was soaked, freezing and my hands were numb despite wearing gloves. The moment I stopped riding I became even colder, and when I tried to change the tube I discovered that my fingers were too numb to get the tyre off the rim.
I had everything I needed. A spare tube, tyre levers and a pump. I just couldn't use them.
As it happened, another cyclist had punctured nearby. He was doing one of the shorter relay sections and had managed to get his tyre sorted, except he didn't have a pump.
Which was interesting.
I had a pump and useless hands.
He had functioning hands and no pump.
We reached the fairly obvious arrangement. He helped me get my tyre off, replace the tube and get everything back together, and I lent him my pump.
Then we both got back on our bikes.
I eventually finished the 160 kilometres exhausted, soaked through, freezing cold and well on the way to getting sick, but feeling pretty pleased with myself nonetheless.
I've remembered that roadside exchange because it illustrates something I've come to appreciate about business.
We tend to think capability means having everything ourselves. We hire another employee, buy another piece of software or look for an agency that promises to do everything from strategy to SEO, advertising, websites, social media, PR and probably unblock the kitchen sink while they're there.
Most businesses don't need that. They need to know what they're good at, what they've already got and, importantly, what's missing.
That's increasingly the thinking behind Iron Road.
We work as a fractional marketing and communications partner, which means we're quite comfortable working with what a business already has. There may be an internal marketing person, a graphic designer, a web company, an advertising agency or somebody in the business who happens to be very good at LinkedIn.
We're not there to replace capable people for the sake of owning the whole job.
Our role is to bring senior marketing and communications thinking, positioning, PR, content and editorial judgement to the table, identify what's missing and help make the various parts work together.
- Sometimes we'll do the work ourselves.
- Sometimes we'll direct it.
- Sometimes the right answer is to bring in somebody who does something better than we do.
Because having every tool isn't the same as having every capability.
I learnt that somewhere on the side of Lake Taupō with a flat tyre, a bicycle pump and two hands that were about as useful as frozen sausages.
