In the “Mission Impossible” series, we focus on applying creative thinking to popular Excel techniques, taking widely recognized individual-use methods and scaling them for enterprise-level scenarios. While these popular techniques, viewed by millions, work well in small-scale or local settings, they often fall short in larger, more complex business environments. Our mission is to demonstrate how these local spreadsheet techniques can be reframed and transformed into corporate-level solutions.
Popular vs. Enterprise-Level Solutions.
Let’s start with a clear example: the Oz du Soleil/Wyn Hopkins Excel Expert Challenge. This involves a simple, local system where members have already voted for their chosen colour scheme for their website. Each employee had selects their top three choices, and the challenge is to count the votes to determine the winner. In this limited setting, the Excel solution works fine—Wyn provides two local techniques that counts votes and produces a result.
Now, let’s imagine scaling this up for a large company with multiple departments voting for the Employee of the Week of the Sales Department, weekly. Soon the company leadership wants this award initiative to happen for five departments every week. They want the process to work unattended; that is, automated so that no one needs to administrate it. The leadership also wants transparency, meaning we need to track how each employee voted, but this information only to be available to top management. The solution that is required is now end-to-end, beginning at where the employees cast their votes, all the way to the final result, rather than the narrow focus of the original local task in the Excel Expert Challenge. And this process has to work every week for five departments. The complexity of this request is dramatically more ‘impossible’. The simple local solution now needs to handle multiple votes in multiple departments over time and ensure transparency. This shift from a small-scale problem to an enterprise-level challenge requires a fundamental rethinking of the approach to the solution.
At this point, many would assume that a more complex problem requires an even more complex solution. However, using creative thinking, we’ll show how we can provide a simpler solution that delivers more value, or as we say, “more bang for the buck.”
The Role of Creative Thinking.
Creative thinking starts with devising a strategic approach, having understood the problem in the most direct terms. Excel, as the tool of choice, becomes the most powerful platform for implementing this strategy, especially when dealing with data. Many might argue for the use of Python, C#, or Office Scripts for such tasks, but Excel already has built-in capabilities for handling complex data situations, including seamlessly leveraging a relational database. The ability to leverage Excel’s existing functions, combined with creative thinking, allows us to craft efficient solutions that are scalable and maintainable, without advanced technical knowledge.
Excel’s Power in Data Manipulation.
Why Excel? Because it’s specifically designed to manipulate and manage data efficiently. Unlike other tools, Excel can synergically work with relational databases and has the flexibility to connect with external data sources, making it the perfect fit for enterprise-level scenarios. Once you see how Excel can be used to automate and streamline complex processes, it becomes clear why it remains the go-to tool for businesses worldwide.
Scaling Up Popular Techniques.
Let’s look at a few real-life examples to understand how popular techniques can be scaled up with creative thinking:
1. REG Call Handler and Friends’ Expenses: What starts as a simple task can be scaled into a corporate scenario where financial data is distributed across multiple departments, each requiring accurate real-time tracking.
2. Gordon Ramsay Challenge: In this exercise you will see that only 1% of candidates thought creatively, while the others thought literally. Interestingly, 100% of employers prefer the 1%.
In each case, the problem (at first) appears more complex when scaled, but with creative thinking, the solution can actually become simpler while still delivering superior results.
Identifying Key Concepts.
A critical part of creative thinking is identifying the key concepts that need to be addressed. Often, there are dots that won’t connect until the right idea is introduced. For example, once you understand how to leverage relational databases within Excel, you can’t ignore how powerful it is in scaling business solutions. You can’t ‘unsee’ it. Similarly, in financial planning and analysis (FP&A), no matter how advanced tools become, the core principles of budgeting, reporting, and forecasting remain fundamental. Without mastering these, any extra layers–such as AI or other innovations–are built on shaky ground.
It’s essential to understand that adding complexity on top of a weak foundation is futile–it’s like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Conclusion: Achieving More with Less.
The core message here is that through creative thinking, we can achieve more with less. By simplifying solutions while scaling them to handle larger, enterprise-level problems, we deliver higher value without unnecessary complexity. This approach saves time, resources, and money for businesses, making Excel the ultimate tool for these transformations.
Instead of spending large sums on external systems, companies can rely on Excel’s built-in functionalities to develop scalable, transparent, and efficient systems. This is the key takeaway from the Excel Mission Impossible series–by applying creative thinking, we can turn seemingly impossible challenges into solvable, business-ready solutions.
This is a podcast by Hiran de Silva. Narrated by Bill.
Add comment