What Wheelbuilding Taught Me About Resilience
In wheel building, there is a process called "stress relieving."
After you lace the spokes and bring them up to tension, the wheel looks perfect. It spins true. It looks ready to ride.
But it isn't.
If you rode it now, the spokes would unwind and the wheel would wobble within the first mile. To finish the build, you have to grab the spokes and squeeze them hard. You have to physically stress the system to settle the components into place.
Often, this makes the wheel go out of true. You have to fix it again. You repeat this until the wheel stays true even after being stressed.
It’s a great reminder for engineering and leadership:
Visual perfection is deceptive. Just because it looks "straight" doesn't mean it's stable.
Stress is necessary for settlement. You have to test the system under load to see where the weak points are.
Resilience is an iteration. You don't build it once; you build, stress, adjust, and repeat.
The strongest structures aren't the ones that avoided stress—they’re the ones that were settled by it.
#Engineering #Cycling #WheelBuilding #Leadership #GrowthMindset
