The Balls Diagram: Excel Done Badly vs. Excel Done Well

By Hiran de Silva

When we talk about “automation” in Excel, what do we really mean?

Most of the time, what’s meant is simply this: take a process that used to be manual—step one, step two, step three—and bolt on a bit of automation to make each step quicker. In other words, automate the steps, one ball at a time.

That’s what my balls diagram illustrates.

• On the left, we see a long chain of balls. Each ball is a step in a manual process. Automation in the way it’s taught on social media is simply to mechanise each ball in turn.
• On the right, there is a straight line: one direct path from beginning to end. That’s real transformation. That’s Excel done well.

Social Media Excel: Automating the Chain of Balls

Take a very common business need: a budget holder wants to see what a draft accounts figure is made up of.

According to social media training, here’s what they’ll do:

1. Download raw data from the ERP system.
2. Download other codes or balances from other systems.
3. Gather it all into a folder.
4. Use Power Query to import those files into a data model.
5. Load that model into a table or paste into a range.
6. Use dynamic arrays, formulas, and filters to drill down to the detail.
7. Eventually, get the list of transactions that make up the total.
8. If something looks wrong, switch to Teams or email or WhatsApp to argue with finance.

That’s the “highest level of automation” you’ll be taught. And to be fair, it’s a big improvement compared to the purely manual version. There are thousands of YouTube videos showing exactly this—Power Query imports, consolidation demos, automating step after step. Apparently there are more than 50,000 tutorials on importing data with Power Query, and another 5–10,000 just on consolidation.

It’s no wonder people think this is the pinnacle of Excel.

Why Social Media Misleads

Here’s the heart of the problem.

Social media rewards short, punchy, feature-first content.

• Each ball in the chain is a perfect topic for a tutorial: “How to use Power Query to import CSVs.” “How to filter with Dynamic Arrays.” “How to use Power Automate to send emails.”
• Every one of those steps makes for a neat, snackable demo.
• Power Query and Dynamic Arrays alone provide hundreds of thousands of “content opportunities.”
• And don’t forget, Power Automate to send emails to the finance team.

The result? A firehose of training that focuses on features rather than outcomes.

What gets lost is the bigger picture: the budget holder doesn’t want to learn fifty clever tricks. They want one thing—to know what makes up the number in front of them, right now.

That’s outcome-first. And that’s where social media is weakest.

Excel Done Well: Direct to the Answer

Now, let’s look at the same problem in Excel—but done properly.

On the left of the screen, you see the consolidated profit and loss for India. Dozens of shops rolled up into one figure.

The budget holder wants to know what makes up a particular line. Instead of all the downloading, importing, and wrangling, they simply click the cell. On the right, Excel immediately shows the list of items that add up to that number. Done.

If they want to dispute an item, they type their comment right there and press PUT. Instantly, finance has the list of issues. No Teams threads, no automated email flows, no elaborate Office Scripts. Just one step.

That’s the difference between automating balls in a chain and going directly from start to finish.

Two Worlds of Excel

Here’s the shock: both of these are Excel.

• The clunky version—the long chain of automated steps—is what dominates teaching material, because it drives likes and subscriptions.
• The elegant version—the direct path—is almost invisible.

And because of the sheer volume of content in the first camp, there’s now an unshakeable belief that the “chain of balls” is the most powerful use of Excel.

But you’ve just seen otherwise.

The Real Message

My message is simple:

👉 Excel is far more powerful than social media tells us.

It can do more than automate your manual steps one by one. It can take you directly from question to answer, in a single click, in a way that is faster, cleaner, and more transformative than thousands of Power Query tutorials combined.

You be the judge.