In the wider universe of Excel, there are two distinct worlds: Popular Excel and Professional Excel. The former dominates social media, training courses, and webinars, offering quick tips and flashy tricks that appeal to the masses. But beneath this surface-level content lies a deeper, more impactful reality–Professional Excel. This world is far less discussed but has immense relevance and value in enterprise environments, offering scalable, efficient solutions that transform business processes.
The Current State of Popular Excel.
Scroll through social media, and you’ll see thousands of posts on Excel: bite-sized tips, keyboard shortcuts, and formula tricks, often accompanied by YouTube thumbnails with a shocked-looking face, designed to catch attention. These posts aim to accumulate likes, shares, and subscriptions. Popular Excel thrives on sensationalism, catering to individual users who seek instant solutions for isolated tasks. The majority of Excel content, about 99%, is designed for a single-user scenario. Yet this only represents a small fraction of Excel’s true and wider capacity.
The problem? Social media-driven Excel content hardly acknowledges that there’s an entirely different approach needed when it comes to large-scale, enterprise-level Excel usage. The sensational tips that work for a local personal project will likely crumble under the weight of complex real-life business requirements, leading to inefficiencies and what is commonly referred to as “Excel Hell.” What I call the Jackson Pollock reality.
What Is Professional Excel?
Professional Excel, by contrast, is designed for enterprise environments. It’s about more than just using a few formulas or formatting tricks. Professional Excel focuses on building structured, scalable systems that can handle complex business data processes. The solutions here are robust, adaptable, and future-proof, built using techniques that integrate multiple data sources and connect business functions seamlessly. Connecting people and processes efficiently.
People like Tomasz Zarzyka, Marcus Syben, Ed Cruz, Kamal Bharakda, Ismail Hosen, Craig Hatmaker, and Stephen Rayward, Bill Bekenn, professionals in the field, are familiar with this concept. They’ve seen how the right approach can transform disjointed processes into streamlined, efficient systems. They don’t just work in Excel–they develop enterprise architectures, often employing a “Hub and Spoke” model to centralize data management, reduce manual work, and enable scalability. My work was referenced in an article on WIRED magazine during the pandemic, where my clients paid six-figure amounts for spreadsheets that, curiously, had only one sheet and no data on them. But were used throughout the organisation in essential daily ongoing processes such as budgeting and reporting, and re-forecasting.
Why the Disconnect?
There’s a curious imbalance between the two worlds of Excel. Despite Excel being a staple in the business world, the majority of online content is focused on short-term, individual solutions of single-users on the one machine in isolated tasks – not enterprise-level ongoing process. The popular perception of Excel is skewed because most popular users are never exposed to the professional side of it. And social media aims at this audience, and at that level. The bottom of the pyramid. Naturally.
Social media influencers, often not practitioners in the field themselves, generate content aimed at trending topics and easy-to-digest tips. This is not to diminish the importance or effectiveness of these tips–they serve a purpose–but they offer little insight into Excel’s potential for enterprise-level solutions and innovation.
What’s lacking in popular Excel is an understanding of context. Enterprise-level work requires a vastly different approach to designing spreadsheets–one that ensures scalability, minimizes manual work, and supports long-term growth. Popular Excel techniques, when applied in an enterprise environment, often lead to chaos: broken links, disjointed systems, and time-consuming manual workarounds. And the constant staring over.
The Mission of the Good Spreadsheet Blog.
The Good Spreadsheet Blog exists to redress this imbalance. Our mission is to promote the understanding and adoption of Professional Excel techniques, ensuring that people know how to apply the right methods in the right contexts.
One critical difference between Popular and Professional Excel is the goal. Popular Excel seeks quick fixes that appeal to a broad less-informed audience. Professional Excel, on the other hand, is about creating systems that work seamlessly across departments, geographies, and business processes. They would appeal to higher levels of organisational responsibility.
Take my own experience: After transforming chaotic, manual processes into streamlined, automated systems for clients, I was hired indefinitely and saw my pay triple. This isn’t an isolated case. I have recently published four such cases as inspiration to others. Professionals who understand and apply these techniques are in high demand, though you won’t often hear their stories. Why? Because many of them are too busy doing the work to chase social media attention. And indeed their work, clients, and confidentiality needs to be protected.
The Pitfall of Popular Excel in Enterprise Environments.
When popular Excel techniques are misapplied in enterprise settings, the result is often a tangle of complex formulas, external links, and manual data manipulation–what I call the “Jackson Pollock reality” of spreadsheets. This chaotic structure has led to Excel being demonized as a risky, error-prone tool, often referred to as Excel Hell in promotional material by competitors. In reality, the problem isn’t Excel–it’s the misuse of Excel.
The proliferation of bad practices has even given rise to a $100 billion industry aimed at fixing these mistakes, casting Excel as a flawed tool. But the truth is, these issues stem from applying single-user techniques to a process that requires professional, enterprise-level thinking.
Why Professional Excel Is the Future.
For those willing to break away from the constraints of Popular Excel, the opportunities are vast. There is significant value to be unlocked by understanding the right techniques and applying them effectively. This value is not just in terms of individual career growth but also in the success of the organizations that adopt these strategies. My own story should serve as a beacon.
In the enterprise world, using Excel properly can mean the difference between a well-oiled machine and a business bottlenecked by inefficiencies. The professionals working in this space–though fewer in number–are essential to transforming how businesses operate. They take on the responsibility of converting Excel from a simple tool into a powerful engine for systematized business processes.
Final Thoughts: Transparency Over Division.
This isn’t about creating a political division between Popular and Professional Excel; rather, it’s about understanding the context and knowing when to use each approach. Popular Excel has its place and purpose, but it’s vital to acknowledge that that local mindset cannot handle the complexities of the business world.
For those in business consultancy or Excel development, understanding this difference is key to unlocking greater opportunities, both for clients and for personal career growth. So, if you’re wondering whether you’re applying the right Excel techniques, ask yourself: Are you aiming for likes and subscribes, or are you aiming for long-term, scalable solutions that drive real business operations and processes?
The Good Spreadsheet Blog is here to guide you through that choice. There’s a world of professional Excel out there, ready to be explored and embraced by those looking to take their skills–and their career–to the next level.
Make your choice. Understand the difference. The reward of Professional Excel is waiting for you.
You’ve been listening to a podcast by Hiran de Silva. Read by Bill.
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