What can a fable about watchmakers teach us about building resilient workflows for our CRMs? As it turns out, the story is an excellent analogy for why small, modular systems allow advisory firms to spend less time building and more time scaling their practice.
Two watchmakers, Tempus and Hora, were both excellent and in high demand. Each built watches from roughly a thousand parts, but Hora prospered while Tempus went broke. The difference was not talent. It was assembly method.
Tempus built each watch as one continuous piece, so a half-finished watch fell apart whenever he set it down. Hora, by contrast, built stable subassemblies that could hold together on their own.
Tempus’s approach made him vulnerable to interruption. Every phone call, every new order, and every unexpected distraction sent his nearly complete work back to a pile of loose parts. The more popular he became, the worse the problem got. Hora’s method was more resilient. When he was interrupted, he only lost the small cluster he was actively working on. Everything already assembled stayed intact.
The difference is in the resiliency of work-in-progress. With even a 1% chance of interruption per part, Tempus needed a thousand uninterrupted steps in a row to finish a watch. Hora only needed to survive about ten steps at a time.
The lesson behind the fable
The story comes from Herbert Simon’s 1962 essay The Architecture of Complexity. Simon’s point was not really about watches. It was about systems. Complex things evolve and survive far better when they are built from stable, nested modules. That is why software uses functions and libraries, manufacturing uses subassemblies, and biology uses cells, tissues, and organs.
If you have read my blog or spoken with me about workflows, you know I am a big fan of both Herbert Simon and Donella Meadows. Together, they point to a simple truth: complex systems work best when they are broken into small, reusable parts that can be reconfigured in different ways to produce different results. For me, that translates directly into CRM workflows that are modular by design.
Why modular CRM workflows matter
Imagine a firm that handles four different client meeting types: portfolio reviews, estate planning meetings, tax planning meetings, and retirement planning meetings.
Each one will require a different preparation process and a different agenda, but the scheduling portion is often quite similar: You email the client a calendar link, they choose a time, the time is added to the calendar, and there is likely a loop to reschedule if the client doesn't respond to the initial request.
The follow-up process is usually similar as well: record notes in the CRM, send a summary, and add follow-up tasks. When we separate the process into modules, such as scheduling, preparation, meeting, and follow-up, we can reuse those pieces across multiple meeting types.
That matters for several reasons:
- Speed to build and test. Smaller modules are easier to build and test than one large, complicated workflow.
- Setbacks are less severe. If the scheduling module fails, it is usually noticed quickly and corrected before it affects too many clients.
- Troubleshooting is easier. A failure in a large workflow can be hard to trace, especially when automations and branching are involved.
- Consistency improves. Clients, CSAs, and advisors all know exactly what will happen at each stage when the same module is used repeatedly.
- Updates are simpler. If you change vendors or switch from one scheduling tool to another, you only need to update one module.
- Practice visibility gets better. Managers can identify where bottlenecks are happening rather than staring at a pile of unfinished meeting workflows.
The real takeaway
The next time you are designing workflows for your firm, consider the lesson of Hora and Tempus. Choose the approach that is resilient to disruption, easy to maintain, and built for change. The more modular your systems become, the more time you free up for the work that actually grows your business.