Yesterday I wanted to spend a few hours at the beach. That should have been one of the simplest decisions of the day. Instead, I found myself choosing between watch configurations. Not watches. Watch configurations. If you’re not interested in watches, you’ve probably just rolled your eyes. Bear with me. This gets worse before it gets better.
The strange thing about owning more than one watch is that you eventually stop choosing between watches. You start choosing between combinations. First, there are different watch types. Dress watches. Dive watches. Field watches. Pilot watches. GMT watches. Chronographs. Smartwatches. Then there are different case materials. Steel. Titanium. Gold. Ceramic. Carbon. Then come the straps and bracelets. Leather. Steel. Rubber. Silicone. NATO. Milanese. And finally there are the occasions. Business meetings. Client workshops. Traveling. Black tie. Dinner. Walking. Hiking. Swimming. Beach holidays. Working from home.
Some combinations work beautifully. Others feel completely wrong. A dress watch on a rubber strap. A dive watch with a crocodile leather strap. A smartwatch with a dinner jacket. Technically possible. Practically… questionable.
Yesterday’s shortlist looked like this:
- Victorinox on its steel bracelet.
- Victorinox on the rubber strap that I still intend to buy.
- Apple Watch Ultra with the titanium Milanese Loop.
- Apple Watch Ultra with a silicone strap.
Leather straps never even made the shortlist. Swimming eliminates leather before the discussion begins.
At this point normal people have probably stopped reading. Or they’re wondering why anyone would willingly complicate something as simple as going to the beach. That is a fair question. I wondered the same thing.
Then I realized I wasn’t really choosing a watch. I was performing an assessment.
Hidden beneath the madness
Without consciously thinking about it, I had already established the context. The occasion was:
- Swimming.
- Sunbathing.
- Casual leisure.
- Warm weather.
- Activity tracking would be useful.
The occasion had quietly defined the reference model. Once that happened, the rest became surprisingly structured. Leather disappeared immediately because it failed a mandatory criterion. The remaining candidates all satisfied the essential requirements. The Victorinox on its steel bracelet would have worked perfectly. The Apple Watch Ultra with the silicone strap would also have worked perfectly.
In the end I chose the Apple Watch Ultra with the titanium Milanese Loop. Why? Because it already met every important criterion. It works well in the water. It tracks my activity. The Milanese Loop is surprisingly comfortable for swimming. And it was already on the watch.
Changing to the silicone strap might have produced a tiny improvement. Not enough to justify changing it. The decision wasn’t about finding perfection. It was about recognizing that several options were good enough.
Then something even stranger happened
Choosing a watch for today turned out not to be the most interesting assessment. The more interesting question was what this decision said about the collection itself. Suppose I repeatedly discover that no existing watch configuration works well for a certain type of occasion.
Now I have evidence. Not evidence that I need another watch. Evidence that I may be missing a capability. That is an entirely different conclusion. Buying another dive watch because I like dive watches merely enlarges the collection. Buying a watch that enables a capability I genuinely lack expands the capability of the collection.
Those are not the same thing. A larger collection is not necessarily a more capable collection. Someone with twelve dive watches may actually have fewer capabilities than someone with four carefully chosen watches covering formal occasions, everyday wear, outdoor activities and sports.
That distinction only becomes visible once you assess the portfolio rather than admire the individual items.
From watches to organisations
At this point you may have forgotten that this story started with a trip to the beach. So had I. Because somewhere along the way I realized that this wasn’t really about watches. It was about assessment. Start with the context. Make the reference model explicit. Identify mandatory criteria. Eliminate unsuitable options. Compare the remaining candidates. Accept that several answers may be equally valid. Observe recurring patterns over time. Identify capability gaps. Invest where capabilities are missing rather than where enthusiasm happens to be highest.
That is exactly the same reasoning I use when assessing software products, organizational capabilities, consulting practices or transformation initiatives. The domain changes. The thinking does not.
Method in the madness
From the outside this probably looked like an enthusiast overthinking a trivial decision. Perhaps it was. But what looked like madness turned out to have a surprisingly coherent method.
The interesting part is not that I own several watches. The interesting part is that once enough dimensions are involved—watch types, materials, straps, occasions and personal preferences—the number of possible combinations grows remarkably quickly. The world quietly becomes more complicated than our intuition comfortably manages.
That is the moment when methods become valuable. Not because they make the world more complicated. But because they help us navigate complexity without having to rethink everything from first principles every single time. Yesterday I happened to use that method to choose a watch for the beach. Tomorrow I might use exactly the same method to assess a software product, a wardrobe, an organisation or an investment portfolio.
The watches were never really the story. They were simply the easiest place to see the method hiding in the madness.
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