When we think about creative problem-solving in Excel, we often focus on the mechanics—the formulas, the functions, and the shortcuts that help us build solutions quickly. However, there’s a critical aspect of spreadsheet development that’s often overlooked, and that’s the long-term lifecycle of a spreadsheet. To illustrate this concept, let’s use an analogy from aviation:
Anyone can learn to take off in a plane, but not everyone knows how to land it.
Flying a Plane: The Easy Part
Imagine standing at the end of a runway with a plane. You start the engine, release the brakes, and open the throttle. The plane gathers speed and soon lifts off the ground, soaring into the sky. If you’ve ever flown a plane you’d know that happens all by itself. You simply ease the control column back gently to point the nose upwards to climb more steeply. Largely the plane does not need you to drive it much. This moment feels liberating, but flying isn’t just about getting off the ground—it’s about what comes next. You must eventually land the plane, and landing isn’t as simple as taking off.
Landing requires preparation, anticipation, and skill. You’re no longer stationary on a runway with a clear path ahead. Now, you have to maneuver in the sky, accounting for wind, weather, and other planes. The moment you’re airborne, you’ve entered a complex, dynamic environment where positioning and navigation are critical. The same is true in spreadsheet management.
The Spreadsheet Lifecycle: Starting Is Easy, But What About Later?
Just like taking off in a plane, starting a spreadsheet is often the easiest part. We learn how to create them, input data, and maybe even use some clever formulas or features. This is the stage that much of the content on social media and Excel tutorials focuses on—how to “take off” with spreadsheets. But what happens when your spreadsheet needs to scale? What happens when new requirements come in, when you need to hand it off to someone else, or when the environment around your spreadsheet (your business, your data) changes?
That’s when things get complicated. It’s not enough to know how to make a spreadsheet fly. You need to know how to maneuver it through challenges and eventually, land it—delivering a solution that’s stable, maintainable, and ready for future adjustments.
Learning to Maneuver: It’s More Than Just Takeoff
Flying a plane requires more than just pointing in a straight line. Similarly, managing a spreadsheet over its lifecycle involves understanding how to adapt it to new demands, data structures, and business processes. This requires creative thinking—something that can’t be taught in a formula tutorial or a 10-minute YouTube video.
Take, for example, the need to scale a spreadsheet. Most Excel techniques out there teach you how to create, but they don’t prepare you for the complexities of maintaining a solution over time. Think of it like maneuvering a plane to position it for landing. You can’t just coast along and hope for the best. You need foresight and skill to make sure your spreadsheet meets the evolving needs of your team or organization.
Landing: Delivering on New Requirements
Landing the plane—delivering on the long-term requirements of a spreadsheet—is where many Excel users stumble. The same excitement that comes with creating something new isn’t enough when you’re faced with maintaining it or adapting it to new circumstances. Imagine taking off in a plane but not knowing how to land. The results would be disastrous.
Similarly, a spreadsheet built without thought for its future can become a tangled mess, unfit for collaboration or scaling. Weather, traffic, and air traffic control in the analogy are like the unexpected challenges you face when your spreadsheet needs to be updated for a new project, integrated with another system, or used by a different department. You can’t just hope for clear skies. You need to be prepared to adapt.
The Missing Skills: Why Creative Thinking Matters
Many Excel users know how to “take off,” but few know how to “land.” This is because popular Excel training often stops at the basics, its confined to what Excel does by itself, such as its built-in formulas. It teaches us how to get started but leaves out the more challenging skills—how to maintain, scale, and future-proof your spreadsheet solutions. The key to solving this problem lies in creative thinking.
Creative thinking in Excel isn’t just about finding clever workarounds for specific problems. It’s about approaching spreadsheets with a long-term, holistic view. It’s about understanding the lifecycle of your solution and planning for what comes next. Will this spreadsheet be able to handle increased data? Will it be maintainable by others? Is it scalable? These are the questions that need to be asked at the start, not just at the end when things start to go wrong.
Preparing for Success: The Prerequisites of Good Spreadsheet Design
Like flying, creating a successful spreadsheet involves preparation. Before taking off, you need to understand the challenges that lie ahead and be ready to address them. This means thinking beyond just building a functional solution and considering how that solution will evolve over time. Creative thinking helps us anticipate these challenges and build with the future in mind.
So, when you sit down to create your next spreadsheet, ask yourself: are you ready to land it when the time comes? Or are you just focusing on the takeoff? Because, in the long run, it’s not just about getting off the ground. It’s about where you land.
This is a podcast by Hiran de Silva. Narrated by Charlie.
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