In the ongoing debates about Power BI versus Excel, a critical factor is almost always ignored—versatility. Not features. Not design. Not even performance benchmarks. The real question is: How versatile is this tool in solving problems we haven’t yet fully defined? Because in real business, problems are rarely served to you gift-wrapped and pre-structured like a product demo.
To illustrate this, let me bring in the Gordon Ramsay Experiment—not just as a clever thought experiment, but as a way to expose the strategic shortcomings of the way tools are typically “evaluated” online.
What Does Versatility Actually Mean?
Versatility means this: when you’re faced with a challenge, or spot an opportunity, how well does your tool help you meet that challenge or seize that opportunity?
That’s not the same as asking: “What can this tool do?”
Because social media is flooded with product demonstrations—Excel tricks, Power BI dashboards, cloud-based FP&A walkthroughs—that merely demonstrate what the tool can do, not how you could use it strategically to solve a real problem.
These videos tend to follow this pattern:
- The creator clicks around in the tool.
- They stumble on a result that looks visually interesting.
- They package it as “a solution” and label it content.
The Sunday Stroll Analogy: A Story About Aimlessness
Let me tell you a story.
When I first moved to Kidbrooke in southeast London, I wandered out of my new apartment one Sunday afternoon to explore the area. I had no destination in mind. I followed my instincts through a park, into a residential area, around a corner—and found myself at Blackheath Pond, a beautiful surprise.
Now imagine I recorded my stroll and uploaded it to YouTube with the title:
“How to Get to Blackheath Pond from Kidbrooke”
Was that really a guide? Or was it a happy accident dressed up as expertise?
That’s what most online “explainers” are: recorded wanderings, not strategic solutions. Yet they’re presented as definitive guides to success. But try asking the same influencer:
“Can you help me get from Wimbledon to Kew Gardens instead?”
And suddenly, the so-called expert is lost.
The Illusion of Learning: What Social Media Actually Teaches
Most content out there—especially in the Excel and Power BI ecosystems—isn’t actually teaching strategy. It’s teaching how to get from A to B, even though your business problem might require going from E to F, or J to Z.
What’s worse, these “solutions” are usually contrived. The “requirement” itself is made up just to show off a feature. And so, the journey exists solely to validate the vehicle.
This is why I say: most social media “education” in this space is really product promotion in disguise.
So What Would a Strategic Approach Look Like?
Let’s say we start with a real business requirement—just a problem on a whiteboard.
We define it from first principles:
- What is the core issue?
- What are its constraints?
- What outcome do we want?
Then we formulate a strategy, and only then do we select the tools and techniques to help us implement it.
Now ask those same influencers:
“Here’s a business challenge. Show me how your tool solves it.”
If they’ve only ever clicked buttons and copied demos, they won’t know where to begin. Because strategy-first thinking is foreign to them.
The Gordon Ramsay Experiment: A Versatility Test
The Gordon Ramsay experiment began as a simple Excel challenge:
- Gather employee meal preferences.
- Look up standing data.
- Generate a summary report.
Some used basic techniques. Others used advanced ones. But here’s the twist: we then introduce layers of complexity—
- Seat planning.
- Dish allocation by table.
- Printed labels for the waitstaff.
Suddenly, you need to architect a scalable solution. You can’t get away with random clicking. You need a hub-and-spoke model. And guess what? Most social media demonstrators can’t deliver.
Bringing It Back: Power BI vs Excel
Now let’s return to the debate.
When people compare Power BI and Excel, they’re comparing product demonstrations, not versatility. Both sides are guilty of narrowing the conversation to features and UI aesthetics.
But if the test is versatility, there’s no contest:
- Excel handles single-user models and enterprise-wide architectures.
- It supports dynamic dashboards and label printing for kitchen staff.
- It works for local files and global cloud-based infrastructures.
Power BI, powerful as it is, operates within narrower bounds. Its architecture suits dashboards and reporting—not complex multi-layered business process management.
The Blackheath Content Trap
We are now in a strange place where everyone is creating content on how to get from Kidbrooke to Blackheath Pond. Not because it’s important, but because it’s trending. So we end up in a world where:
- Nobody needs that path.
- Nobody benefits from that path.
- But everybody’s watching it, and everybody’s copying it.
Meanwhile, real business users are asking:
“How do I get from E to F?”
And the influencers say:
“That’s not the point. Look at this great path from A to B!”
Final Thought: How to Actually Evaluate Tools
Here’s how we should compare tools:
- Define a real requirement from business life.
- Formulate a strategy from first principles.
- Present the requirement to Excel people, Power BI people, FP&A vendors.
- Ask each to demonstrate how their tool delivers the solution.
Not a contrived solution. Not a demo. Not an aesthetic dashboard.
A real solution to a real business problem.
If they can’t deliver that—if their entire value is in going from A to B—they’ve failed the versatility test.
And that’s why Excel wins. Not in the hands of everyone. But in the hands of those who understand it deeply, think strategically, and build solutions that go far beyond what product demos can teach.
In short:
If you want to go anywhere beyond Blackheath Pond, learn to think strategically—and bring Excel with you!
ABSTRACT
This article argues that the common debate comparing Power BI and Excel overlooks the crucial aspect of versatility in problem-solving, emphasizing the ability of a tool to address undefined future challenges rather than just perform pre-scripted demonstrations. The author uses the “Gordon Ramsay Experiment” to illustrate how many online tutorials showcase basic functionalities instead of strategic application. Through analogies like a “Sunday stroll,” the piece contends that much of the content in the Excel and Power BI space teaches narrow, contrived paths (A to B) instead of broader strategic thinking necessary for real-world business problems (E to F or J to Z). The author suggests a better evaluation method focusing on defining real business needs and then assessing how effectively each tool can provide a genuine solution, concluding that Excel, when deeply understood and strategically applied, demonstrates greater versatility for diverse business challenges compared to the narrower focus of Power BI. Ultimately, the piece champions a strategy-first approach over mere product feature demonstrations.
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