By Hiran de Silva
Let me ask you a simple question.
Are you good with Excel?
Now here is the strange thing.
You are not actually the best person to answer that question.
And neither am I.
The only person qualified to answer it…
is your customer.
Let me explain.
Imagine you take a taxi.
You get into the cab.
You give the destination.
The journey begins.
At the end of the ride, someone asks:
Was that a good taxi driver?
Who decides?
Not the driver.
Not Uber.
Not the sat-nav system.
Only you.
Because only you know one thing that truly matters.
Did you arrive where you intended to go?
And did you arrive safely?
Everything else comes after that.
Comfort.
Speed.
Friendliness.
Route efficiency.
Nice to have.
But secondary.
Because if the driver drops you a mile away and says this is as far as I go…
the ride has failed.
Even if the seats were leather.
Even if the music was perfect.
Even if the driver knew every button in the car.
You did not reach the destination.
Failure.
And this is where Excel enters the story.
In business… spreadsheets are taxis.
Management sets a destination.
A budgeting system.
A reporting process.
A consolidation across hundreds of business units.
A forecasting workflow.
The bosses — and the bosses’ bosses — define where they need to arrive.
They are the passengers.
They alone know the destination.
Your job, as an Excel professional…
is to get them there.
Now something curious happens in the Excel world.
When people ask whether someone is good with Excel…
the discussion immediately shifts to tools.
Functions.
Features.
Buttons.
Dynamic arrays.
Power Query.
LAMBDA formulas.
It becomes a conversation about how well someone drives the cab.
Indicators.
Electric windows.
Gear changes.
Nobody asks the real question.
Can you deliver the passenger to the destination?
Let’s make this concrete.
Suppose management says:
We have hundreds of budget holders.
Multiple consolidation levels.
Continuous updates.
Enterprise scale.
This is where we need to go.
Immediately the internet shouts back:
Use Power Query.
And maybe it works.
Maybe.
But very often, something subtle happens.
You arrive… near the destination.
Close enough to look convincing.
But not actually there.
The system cannot scale properly.
The workflow breaks under real usage.
Users cannot interact the way management needs.
And suddenly the driver says:
I cannot take you any further.
You must walk from here.
That… is a deal breaker.
Because customers never wanted a Power Query model.
They wanted the destination.
Theodore Levitt said customers do not want a quarter-inch drill bit.
They want a quarter-inch hole.
In Excel today, we are selling drill bits everywhere.
Very few people are delivering holes.
I ran an experiment.
The Reg Call Handler challenge.
A real management problem.
One call handler.
One warehouse.
One spreadsheet.
Works perfectly.
Then management says:
Now we have twenty warehouses.
Fifty call handlers.
Enterprise scale.
Make it work.
Every expert agreed on one thing.
The traditional spreadsheet approach would become a nightmare.
Everyone saw the problem.
But then something fascinating happened.
Most drivers said the journey could not be done by taxi.
Excel cannot do this.
You need a system.
You need something else.
In other words…
they refused the fare.
Then another driver arrived.
And said something very different.
Of course we can get there.
And then proceeded to do exactly that.
The passenger arrived safely.
Destination achieved.
Now compare those two drivers.
One understood the destination.
The other understood only the vehicle.
And here is the uncomfortable observation.
After the successful journey was demonstrated…
the drivers who said it was impossible disappeared.
No curiosity.
No investigation.
No attempt to learn the route.
Just silence.
Meanwhile, the marketing continued.
Learn Excel.
Become an expert.
Master the features.
But if the teacher cannot reach the destination…
how can they teach you to get there?
So we return to the original question.
What does being good with Excel actually mean?
It does not mean knowing every function.
It does not mean mastering every new feature Microsoft releases.
It does not mean driving the cab beautifully.
Being good with Excel means this.
Understanding the customer’s destination.
Translating management vision into system design.
And delivering the business safely from A to B.
Alive.
Operational.
Scalable.
Anything less…
is just operating the electric windows.
For decades, Excel education has focused on the vehicle.
Almost none focuses on navigation.
Almost none teaches how to interpret enterprise requirements.
Almost none teaches how to turn vision into architecture.
And that is why so many organizations believe they suffer from Excel Hell.
Not because Excel cannot reach the destination.
But because too many drivers were never taught where the roads actually go.
So next time someone asks:
Are you good with Excel?
Pause.
Do not list functions.
Do not list tools.
Ask a different question.
Can you take your customer where they need to go?
Because in the end…
the only Excel expert who matters…
is the one who gets the passenger to the destination.
Mic drop.
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