In most industries today, the majority of Excel users—those who create, interact with, and maintain spreadsheets—work “inside a box.” That phrase, a traditional expression, describes a mindset where individuals focus solely on their immediate responsibilities, without considering how their work fits into the larger business objectives. Their professional world ends where their specific tasks end.
This “box” mentality dates back to a time when employees worked in physical cubicles, compartmentalized not just physically but mentally as well.
A Wall of Purple Squares
To illustrate the impact of this mindset, imagine a vast white wall. A foreman is tasked with recruiting workers to paint one-centimeter purple squares on it. Each worker is responsible for a tiny square: ensuring it is perfectly painted with neat edges and consistent color. Their performance is judged by how well they stay within their assigned square.
Hundreds of workers diligently paint square after square. Those who perform better—who paint faster, neater squares—are assigned more squares to paint. Over time, the wall is covered with meticulously crafted purple squares.
From the foreman’s perspective, this is a success. He has managed his team effectively, the workers have done their jobs well, and the wall is finally filled.
However, from higher management’s viewpoint, this method is incredibly inefficient. A simple spray gun could have painted the entire wall purple in a fraction of the time and cost. The intricate attention to each tiny box was ultimately unnecessary to achieve the real goal: a uniformly purple wall.
This example encapsulates the “inside the box” mentality. Workers are proud of perfecting their squares, but from a strategic standpoint, a completely different approach—thinking like management—achieves the goal faster, cheaper, and more effectively.
The Excel Parallel
This same thinking applies to Excel users in the enterprise. Most Excel training, techniques, and tutorials available today are aimed at people working inside the box: improving personal productivity, creating slightly better formulas, cleaner pivot tables, or more attractive reports.
But these skills, while useful, don’t transform operations at the organizational level.
There is a “spray gun” equivalent in Excel—approaches that serve enterprise-scale needs far more effectively. I’ll give two key examples:
1. Consolidation: From Pyramid to Hub and Spoke
Consolidating data from hundreds of spreadsheets is a notorious challenge. Traditional methods rely on external links—connecting one spreadsheet to another, forming a risky, fragile pyramid of dependencies. If one link fails, the whole structure can collapse. Tracking down errors becomes a nightmare, and auditing is almost impossible.
This is the “painted squares” approach: inefficient and error-prone.
Now consider the “spray gun” alternative: instead of linking spreadsheets, each user uploads their data to a central, shared data table. Consolidation is no longer a mess of tangled files but a simple query summarizing the data by groups and subgroups. It’s robust, scalable, and reliable.
Even using modern tools like Power Query still often results in a “pyramid” structure—separate, disjointed queries instead of one unified system. The hub and spoke model—centralizing data collection—represents the real breakthrough.
2. Scalability: Handling Call Center Stock Management
Take another common scenario: a call center handling stock across multiple warehouses. A typical solution involves each call handler using a local spreadsheet with cascading dropdowns for product selection, based on static stock lists.
This “inside the box” method works for a single user. But when scaling up to 50 call handlers and 20 warehouses, it becomes chaos: stock spreadsheets must be constantly emailed back and forth, updated manually, and synchronized—a logistical nightmare involving thousands of moving pieces.
The “spray gun” solution? Centralize the stock data in one dynamic data table, updated in real time. Call handlers’ spreadsheets pull live data from the central source. No files flying around, no outdated stock information, no manual synchronization. One source of truth for everyone.
Why the Gap Persists
The key problem is that people working inside the box are not naturally motivated to seek or implement these transformational solutions. Their training focuses entirely on optimizing their little square—not on seeing the bigger wall.
Even highly skilled Excel users can remain boxed in, because their expertise is confined to “doing their piece better,” not redesigning the entire process.
For true transformation, two things must happen:
- The contrast must be explained and exposed: people need to see the difference between painting squares and using a spray gun.
- There must be motivation to change: typically from management, who are interested in overall efficiency and results.
Without these two elements, organizations remain stuck with minor improvements rather than real breakthroughs.
The Opportunity
In my career, I was the person who introduced these kinds of transformations. By thinking like management, not like a worker in a box, I was able to create massive improvements in productivity—and was rewarded accordingly, tripling my salary.
The world is still full of opportunities for individuals who can break out of the box mindset and bring “spray gun” thinking to their organizations. Most teaching out there focuses only on better box-painting techniques. Very few are explaining or demonstrating what real transformation looks like.
If you become that person, you will not only add tremendous value—you will also reap the rewards.
Final Thought
This idea is similar to the famous shift from horse-drawn carriages to motor cars. In the early days, people imagined motorized “robotic horses” rather than recognizing the revolutionary potential of engines.
Likewise, in Excel—and in business—it’s time to stop perfecting robotic horses. It’s time to start the engine.
Add comment