The Chocolate Box, the Mobile Phone, and the Ethics of Excel Education

By Hiran de Silva

This piece is inspired by the reflections of Md Ismail Hosen on LinkedIn. This is Part 3. See Part 1 and Part 2 here.

In earlier parts of this series, I used the chocolate box vs. mobile phone analogy to highlight a striking reality:

• Most people walk out of the shop with a box of chocolates.
• Few leave with the mobile phone—the very thing they truly need.

Why? Because the chocolates are attractive, accessible, and easy to understand. The mobile phone, though infinitely more valuable in an emergency, requires deeper understanding. It demands education and explanation—something the shopkeeper either cannot or will not provide.

The Ethical Question

This raises an ethical dilemma:

• Does the shopkeeper have any duty to educate the customer that the chocolates are not, in fact, a phone?
• Or is it simply buyer beware—the customer gets what they ask for, even if they don’t really understand what they need?

In this transaction, all parties appear satisfied:

• The customer believes their needs are met.
• The shopkeeper enjoys healthy margins on chocolate sales.
• The ecosystem—suppliers, marketers, other shopkeepers—thrives in blissful ignorance.

Yet beneath the surface lies an opportunity cost: wasted potential, missed value, and unseen risk.

Excel as the Chocolate Box

This is where Excel enters the picture.

Today, much of what passes for “Excel education” is the equivalent of selling chocolate boxes. Short tutorials, flashy tricks, and five-minute videos flood social media, and people feel satisfied—they’ve “bought something.”

But what they really need in the enterprise is the mobile phone equivalent of Excel: scalable architecture, database integration, client–server models, and true process transformation.

The tragedy is that:

• Customers don’t know what they’re missing.
• Shopkeepers (trainers, influencers, vendors) may not know either—or have no incentive to educate.
• The industry happily perpetuates the cycle.

And so, a distorted truth becomes “common sense”: that Excel is limited, error-prone, or inherently unfit for enterprise.

When the Emergency Comes

But what happens when the emergency arises?

Imagine the customer, armed with nothing but an empty chocolate box, suddenly facing a crisis where only a mobile phone will do.

In business terms, this is the moment when:

• A budgeting process collapses under scale.
• A consolidation task becomes unmanageable.
• A critical reconciliation fails at board level.

If you thought you had a phone but only had chocolates, the consequences are immediate: lost opportunity, lost credibility, and someone else stepping in with the real solution.

The Cost of Misunderstanding

Here lies the hidden cost:

• The customer doesn’t feel it, because they never saw the opportunity.
• The shopkeeper doesn’t feel it, because they keep selling chocolates.
• The industry doesn’t feel it, because everyone assumes this is normal.

But the cost is real. It shows up in inefficiency, wasted expenditure, and the perpetual cycle of “Excel hell.”

So What Now?

The question I leave you with is this:

Is there value in exposing the illusion? In demonstrating that what the Excel audience has been taught—the chocolates—is not the full truth, and that mastering the mobile phone version of Excel opens up new opportunities?

I believe the answer is yes.

Because it is precisely this misunderstanding that creates the opportunity. For those willing to see Excel differently—those ready to step into the “mobile phone” side of the analogy—the rewards can be immense.

I know, because that’s how I tripled my pay—multiple times, in multiple companies.

This is where my Four Quadrant Sketch comes in. It shows that while most of the industry sits comfortably in the chocolate-box world, a small number of individuals and organizations can step into a different quadrant altogether—one where Excel becomes a true enterprise tool, and where opportunity turns into profit.

The Final Twist

But let me end with a paradox.

What if customers entered the shop not to buy a phone at all, but simply because they wanted chocolates?

If that’s the case, then perhaps the system works as it is. There are plenty of customers happy with chocolates, plenty of shopkeepers ready to supply them, and a whole ecosystem sustained by this shared illusion.

And yet—for those who dare to look beyond the chocolates—there is an entirely different market, an entirely different career path, and an entirely different way to create value.

That’s where the mobile phone comes in. That’s where the real opportunity lies.

And that’s what I’ll continue to shine a light on.