A podcast by Hiran de Silva. Read by Bill.
Excel is a cornerstone in global business operations. It’s the glue that binds together countless workflows, connecting people, processes, and systems. However, there’s a growing dissonance between the techniques promoted on social media, designed for individual users working in isolation, and the reality of Excel’s role in even the simplest enterprise environments. This disconnect has created a cascade of inefficiencies, risks, and confusion.
Enter “Excel Mission Impossible”–a bold new series that challenges both the Excel-bashing industry and social media influencers to confront this gap head-on. The goal? To explore the limits of popular Excel techniques and determine their true applicability in enterprise scenarios, where stakes are high, and the margin for error is slim.
The Single-User Dilemma.
Social media is flooded with tips and tricks aimed at the single-user spreadsheet scenario. These techniques often focus on isolated tasks, performed on a single machine, using a single spreadsheet. They’re quick fixes, designed to dazzle, but rarely do they scale well in a collaborative, enterprise environment.
And therein lies the problem. Despite the fact that most significant spreadsheets reside in enterprise environments, the guidance that dominates social media is largely aimed at individual users. This creates a dangerous overlap, where techniques designed for simplicity and isolation are applied to complex, mission-critical workflows–resulting in chaos, inefficiency, and heightened risk.
Industry seems to accept this chaos as a necessary evil, an occupational hazard of using spreadsheets in large organizations. But should we? **Excel Mission Impossible** challenges this narrative.
The False Assumptions About Excel.
Many influencers and third-party vendors are quick to point out the mess created by spreadsheets in enterprises and use this as “evidence” that Excel is inherently flawed. They then position their alternative tools as the only viable solution. But are they comparing apples to apples? Or are they comparing Excel, inappropriately applied, to their solutions? Is Excel itself the problem, or is it the way it’s being used? Or are the Excel-Bashers exploiting a miscomprehension?
The truth is that Excel, when applied correctly, is built to excel – pun intended – in enterprise scenarios. It’s not the tool that is flawed; it’s the way people are using it–often relying on popular techniques that were never designed for large-scale, collaborative process-driven environments.
Enter Power Query and Dynamic Arrays.
A prime example of this is Power Query–a powerful tool designed for automation and data transformation. On social media, you’ll often see Power Query applied to individual spreadsheets, performing isolated tasks. But what happens when we apply Power Query to an enterprise scenario? Does it scale? And if not, how do we adjust it? The same goes for dynamic arrays–another game-changing feature that transforms how data is managed in Excel. How do these tools fare when applied to workflows that span multiple users, departments, and even systems?
This is the heart of **Excel Mission Impossible**: testing these popular techniques in real-world, high-stakes environments to see if they hold up or if adjustments are necessary.
Who’s Invited to the Challenge?
This challenge is aimed at three groups:
1. **Excel Influencers**: The social media experts who demonstrate the latest tips and tricks. This is an opportunity to revisit and demonstrate these techniques in an enterprise context.
2. **Vendors of Excel Alternatives**: Those who have built their business on the notion that Excel is flawed. Are their solutions truly superior, or are they simply sidestepping a misapplication of Excel itself?
3. **Professional Excel Experts**: Individuals who have mastered Excel in large-scale, collaborative environments. Their insights are crucial in separating what works from what doesn’t.
What Can We Expect?
This series is an invitation to transparency, collaboration, and discovery. It’s a chance to break down the assumptions surrounding Excel and see it for what it truly is–a powerful enterprise tool when applied correctly. Whether we confirm the risks or uncover new best practices, **Excel Mission Impossible** will add value by promoting deeper understanding and better practices for Excel in enterprise scenarios.
So let’s embark on this mission together and uncover the truth: How do popular Excel techniques measure up in the real world? Will they succeed or fail? Let’s find out.
You’ve been listening to a podcast by Hiran de Silva. Read by Bill.
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