By Hiran de Silva
Brian Julius recently framed the micro vs macro debate in a way that cuts through the noise, and Leon Gordon has long inspired this conversation too. Their perspectives reminded me of something bigger: how the pendulum of Excel has swung across decades — from enterprise powerhouse to social media spectacle — and what that means today.
Phase One: The Birth of Spreadsheets (1980s)
The early spreadsheets of the 1980s were revolutionary. They democratized computation. Anyone with a PC could suddenly model numbers, run scenarios, and challenge established processes. It was a breakthrough — a new kind of productivity tool.
Phase Two: Professional Heights (1990s–2000s)
By the 1990s and early 2000s, spreadsheets matured into serious professional infrastructure. Excel connected seamlessly with databases. Client-server models, ADO, and SQL integration meant you could build enterprise-grade systems with Excel as the front end and a database as the back end.
This was the heyday of professional Excel.
The corporate world ran on this. Budgets, reconciliations, reporting — critical processes were powered by Excel.
But another world of Excel was slowly emerging. The “sea of amateur spreadsheets” problem emerged because so much corporate data was stored in individual spreadsheets, on personal machines and personal network drives. Microsoft’s response was Excel Services, XML formats, and the promise of .NET-based control. That moment held the potential for Excel to cement itself as amateur, and professional and scalable.
It didn’t quite take off.
Phase Three: The Democratization & Social Media Takeover (2010s)
Enter social media. The narrative around Excel shifted dramatically. Instead of being framed as a professional-grade enterprise platform, Excel became “content.”
Tips, tricks, shortcuts, and colorful features dominated the conversation. The pendulum swung hard toward popularity rather than professionalism. Excel was repositioned as a playground for hacks and visual gimmicks. Useful for engagement, yes. Useful for enterprise outcomes? Not really.
This is where the micro vs macro divide sharpened. The micro — clever formulas, neat features — became viral. The macro — system design, architecture, outcomes — was sidelined.
Phase Four: Complexity for Its Own Sake (2020s)
Now the pendulum has swung further still. Enter the Power Platform: Power Query, Power BI, Power Automate. In theory, these promise democratized transformation. In practice, much of the content orbiting them is feature-led, not outcome-led.
We see highly complex, often impractical solutions celebrated on LinkedIn and YouTube. Great for training courses. Great for engagement. But ask the basic question: does this deliver an outcome faster, cheaper, or more effectively than the alternatives? Often the answer is no.
Then there is the ‘no-code, low-code’ mantra. What happens when a ‘no-code, low-code’ solution hits the buffers? Then you would need advanced code to move further (Office Scripts, Python, M-code). Do those who chose this route have the aptitude for that? Obviously not, as they took this route precisely to avoid code!
Feature-led vs Outcomes-led
This is the real divide.
- Feature-led thinking: “Look at this formula, look at this Power Query trick, look at this feature, keyboard shortcut.”
- Outcome-led thinking: “How does this help us close the books faster? Deliver a budget to management more accurately? Save time, reduce risk, scale across 50 countries?”
The industry has drifted toward the former, while the real value lies in the latter.
Excel Mission Impossible: Pulling the Pendulum Back
This is where projects like Excel Mission Impossible matter. They dramatize the gap. On one side: buzzwords, features, social media visibility. On the other: actual business outcomes, delivered with elegance and simplicity, often using tools already built into Excel but forgotten in the noise.
The pendulum is overdue for a swing back. Not toward nostalgia — but toward balance. Toward recognising that the ultimate measure of any tool isn’t how viral it goes on LinkedIn, but how it solves problems in the enterprise. Now, and tomorrow.
The Missing Insight
Brian Julius’s micro vs macro framing gives us the lens. Leon Gordon’s emphasis on scaling to enterprise adds the challenge. The missing insight is this:
We need to reset the pendulum from features back to outcomes. From buzzwords to business. From showpieces to systems.
Excel has always had this power. The only question is whether we choose to use it.
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