In today’s business landscape, there exists a significant yet often overlooked dichotomy between what I call Popular Excel and Professional Excel. At first glance, these two may appear similar since they both involve the same tool—Excel. However, their purposes, outcomes, and motivations are worlds apart, serving entirely different industries and producing vastly different results. In this article, we’ll dive into these nuances and explore the important distinctions between these two spheres, providing real-world examples and historical context to flesh out the larger implications.
Professional Excel: Creating Value
The core mission of Professional Excel is to create value. This type of Excel usage exists within the professional world of business and industry, where consultants are hired not just for their technical skills, but for their ability to solve real business problems. This distinction is crucial—any client who pays a consultant does so because they expect value in return, or have already received value and wants to have more of this consultant’s type of value.
When we speak of creating value, it falls into two broad categories:
- Problem-Solving: The consultant addresses a problematic situation in the business, whether it’s chaotic processes, inefficiencies, or losses, and provides order, profitability, and peace of mind. By removing stress and disorder, the consultant adds tangible value that was previously unavailable to the client.
- Identifying Opportunities: Sometimes, the client may not even be aware of the value potential until the consultant reveals an overlooked opportunity. By implementing a solution that uncovers hidden efficiencies or market advantages, the consultant opens up avenues for increased profitability.
In this realm, the consultant’s expertise is essential. They don’t merely fix what’s broken—they help management envision and realize paths to greater productivity and profitability, often in ways the organization had never considered before. The reward for this level of insight is clear: both the company and the consultant benefit, with long-term partnerships and high-value engagements.
Case Study: Real Value, Real Impact
In my personal experience, several companies that initially hired me for routine Excel and accounting skills later retained me indefinitely, tripling my pay because of the game-changing value I brought through Excel-driven solutions. This wasn’t about Excel tricks or flashy dashboards—it was about creating infrastructure that solved systemic issues within their organization on a large scale.
Popular Excel: Social Media-Driven Popularity
On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have Popular Excel. Here, the primary goal isn’t to create value in a business sense, but to popularize Excel itself—often through social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. And, of course, LinkedIn. Excel influencers and content creators thrive on producing quick, flashy videos designed to attract likes, shares, and subscribers.
This social media-driven culture revolves around engagement metrics, rather than real-world business results. The content that performs well is typically simplistic, bite-sized, and often doesn’t dive into the nuanced or complex aspects of professional Excel use. In fact, it’s often the exact opposite: the simpler and more attention-grabbing the content, the better it performs.
The World of Social Media: Headline Culture
To truly understand Popular Excel, we must delve into the world of social media. Social media is a world of headlines, slogans, and quick fixes. It doesn’t thrive on deep understanding or intellectual rigor. Instead, it’s about what grabs attention, even if that attention is fleeting.
This dynamic mirrors historical techniques of mass influence, where the goal was to mobilize large groups with simple messages. Think of political slogans like “Take Back Control” during the UK’s 2016 Leave campaign—a highly emotional message boiled down to just three words. It didn’t require deep understanding or analysis, yet it moved masses of people to action. Similarly, Popular Excel influencers use engaging splash images (often portraying a shocked-looking face of the presenter!), catchy phrases, and “easy hacks” to draw in their audience, keeping things light, accessible, and often, oversimplified.
Does it provide value? Certainly, it provides value for individuals who might be seeking a quick solution to a one-off Excel problem. But does it create value on the same scale as Professional Excel? Rarely. It is not intended to or designed to.
Historical Context: The Power of Mobilizing the Masses
To better understand how Popular Excel functions, let’s take a step back and examine a couple of historical examples of mass mobilization. Growing up in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in the 1960s, I witnessed first-hand how a government won an election by appealing to the masses with the promise of elevating Buddhism’s status. This promise led to sweeping and somewhat nonsensical changes, including altering the national calendar to follow lunar cycles. For five years, the country was out of sync with the rest of the world.
Similarly, when NASA approached Ceylon’s government to join the global message sent to the moon during the Apollo 11 mission, they refused out of concern it would be sacrilegious. In popular Buddhism the moon is sacred. This refusal came from a government that had mobilized its people around an emotional narrative, much like how social media influencers today mobilize followers with simple, emotionally charged messages.
Popular Excel operates on similar principles. The emotional pull of learning an “Excel hack” or “quick trick” keeps viewers engaged. It’s easy, accessible, and offers a quick dopamine hit, much like receiving shocking or viral information on social media. But as we’ll see, the true value of Excel lies beyond these fleeting interactions.
Where the Two Worlds Collide
At first glance, it might seem that Popular Excel and Professional Excel overlap because they both deal with Excel. However, much like a brush can be used by both a painter and a cleaner—two vastly different professions—the similarities between these two realms are superficial at best.
In Professional Excel, the consultant must dig deep, often working within the constraints of complex systems to deliver long-term, scalable solutions that impact entire organizations. These solutions often involve collaborating with teams, working across departments, and thinking about data management on an enterprise level. And resolving the reason for the chaos they’re seeking to eliminate. Often the source may have been created by Popular Excel.
In Popular Excel, however, the goal is to get as many eyes on the content as possible. It’s about mastering social media algorithms, creating content that will go viral, and constantly feeding the system with fresh, engaging material. While this approach may build an individual’s personal brand, it often falls short of providing lasting, business-critical value.
Professional Excel: A Career of Continuous Value Creation
In contrast to the fleeting nature of Popular Excel, Professional Excel involves a career built on creating continuous value for clients. This doesn’t mean constantly chasing likes or trying to go viral—it means digging into the real, structural issues within a business and providing solutions that generate profit, save time, or streamline processes. It requires understanding Excel at a deeper level, not just as a tool for quick fixes, but as part of a broader data management strategy that can drive growth and efficiency.
Over time, the Professional Excel consultant will develop case studies and a reputation based on results. This career trajectory is grounded in continuous improvement, reflection, and the ability to solve increasingly complex problems as the consultant’s expertise grows. The rewards are greater, but so are the expectations. The professional consultant’s work doesn’t end with likes and subscribes—it’s judged by measurable results.
Conclusion: A World Apart
The divide between Popular Excel and Professional Excel isn’t just about content; it’s about purpose, impact, and long-term value. Popular Excel is entertainment-driven, designed to attract followers, while Professional Excel is business-driven, designed to create value. Both have their place, but it’s important to recognize that they serve entirely different needs. Different masters.
For those seeking a career in Excel consulting, understanding this divide is crucial. It’s tempting to focus on social media popularity, but the real rewards—both financially and intellectually—lie in Professional Excel. This is where you’ll find the opportunity to triple your pay, create lasting impact, and build a reputation based on value, not virality.
If you’re serious about mastering Excel, then look beyond the headlines. Embrace the world of Professional Excel, where real solutions make a real difference.
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