By Hiran de Silva
Every morning, somewhere in the world, Microsoft announces another new Excel feature.
Within hours, YouTube fills with demonstrations.
LinkedIn fills with opinions.
Training companies prepare new courses.
Influencers produce videos.
Bloggers write articles.
Thousands of people begin learning the latest capability.
The cycle repeats itself month after month, year after year.
It is a remarkable ecosystem.
It is energetic, enthusiastic, innovative and, in many respects, incredibly valuable.
But one morning I woke up with a sketch in my head that asked a rather uncomfortable question.
What if all of this excitement is centred around the wrong box?
The Big Box
Imagine drawing a large rectangle in the middle of a PowerPoint slide.
Label it simply:
Excel Skills
Now begin drawing arrows pointing into that box.
Microsoft.
Training providers.
YouTube.
LinkedIn.
Social media influencers.
Power Query.
Dynamic Arrays.
LAMBDA.
Python.
Copilot.
Keyboard shortcuts.
Pivot Tables.
New features.
Certification courses.
Books.
Blogs.
Every one of these contributes something to the development of Excel skills.
The rectangle slowly becomes darker as more arrows point towards it.
The picture tells its own story.
There has never been a better time to learn Excel.
There has never been more free content.
Never more training.
Never more innovation.
Never more excitement.
One influencer publishes a popular video.
Ten others produce their own versions.
The topic trends.
Views accumulate.
Subscribers grow.
The entire ecosystem feeds itself.
Did somebody say “viral”?
Take Mynda Treacy’s excellent video describing Excel as a database. Since its publication in September 2025, its views, comments and engagement have continued to grow steadily. The same can be said of many videos covering Power Query, Dynamic Arrays, XLOOKUP, Copilot and countless other topics.
Clearly there is enormous public interest.
But now comes the question.
What is all this activity actually producing?
The Employer Doesn’t Buy Features
Business leaders do not wake up in the morning wondering whether someone knows LAMBDA.
They don’t ask whether a candidate has mastered Power Query.
They don’t hire someone because they can write an elegant LET() formula.
Employers buy something entirely different.
They buy outcomes.
Can this person reduce manual work?
Can they eliminate errors?
Can they improve collaboration?
Can they scale a business process?
Can they consolidate information from hundreds of locations?
Can they connect disconnected processes?
Can they provide governance?
Can they create an audit trail?
Can they make the business more agile?
These are the things employers actually value.
Excel itself has evolved enormously over the past thirty years to help address many of these requirements.
Excel 5 could handle around sixteen thousand rows.
Today’s Excel handles over one million.
Shared workbooks evolved into cloud collaboration.
External links connected departments.
Power Query automated repetitive work.
Dynamic Arrays simplified modelling.
Microsoft has consistently recognised the changing needs of business and expanded Excel accordingly.
So surely this growing capability should have transformed how employers value Excel expertise?
Curiously, it hasn’t.
The Strange Position of Excel
Anyone who has worked in technology for any length of time will recognise an odd reality.
Excel skills are generally regarded as being near the bottom of the technology hierarchy.
ERP consultants command premium rates.
Software developers command premium rates.
Database specialists command premium rates.
Cloud architects command premium rates.
Cybersecurity specialists command premium rates.
Yet Excel professionals—despite often solving highly complex business problems—are frequently regarded as possessing little more than “basic office skills.”
Why?
Not because Excel lacks capability.
Not because businesses don’t depend upon spreadsheets.
They clearly do.
The problem is something much more subtle.
Employers have no reliable way of distinguishing ordinary Excel skills from transformational Excel skills.
To many decision-makers, Excel knowledge is simply something people either have or don’t have.
There is no recognised framework that separates genuinely enterprise-level spreadsheet thinking from everyday spreadsheet competence.
That creates a fascinating paradox.
The Excel education industry becomes increasingly sophisticated.
Meanwhile employer perception barely changes.
Modern Excel Doesn’t Solve This Problem
Some readers will object at this point.
Surely Modern Excel changes everything?
Power Query.
Power Pivot.
Dynamic Arrays.
LAMBDA.
Python.
Copilot.
These are genuinely significant developments.
I agree.
Technically, they are remarkable.
Educationally, they are exciting.
Professionally, they are useful.
But there remains a disconnect.
Business leaders rarely evaluate candidates according to which modern features they know.
Nor do those features automatically translate into dramatically different business outcomes.
In fact, I have demonstrated repeatedly that many enterprise problems solved using sophisticated Modern Excel techniques still produce outcomes that business leaders perceive as fundamentally similar to traditional spreadsheet approaches.
The technology has advanced.
The employer’s perception often has not.
The Missing Box
Now draw a second rectangle.
This one is tiny.
Place it beside the first.
It has very few arrows pointing towards it.
Almost nobody talks about it.
Almost nobody teaches it.
Almost nobody even recognises it exists.
Yet this tiny box contains the skills that consistently produce the outcomes employers actually pay for.
The principles are surprisingly simple.
Separate spreadsheets from data.
Allow many spreadsheets to work with one central source of truth.
Treat spreadsheets as intelligent clients rather than isolated files.
Replace file movement with data movement.
Replace copying with retrieval.
Replace consolidation with querying.
Replace disconnected processes with connected ones.
These ideas sound almost disappointingly simple.
They are.
And that is precisely why they are so powerful.
The Gordon Ramsay Experiment
Whenever I want to demonstrate this distinction, I don’t use accounting.
I don’t use budgeting.
I don’t use finance.
I use food.
Imagine Gordon Ramsay running weekly corporate lunches.
Every Monday he decides the menu.
One hundred employees must choose their meals.
By Wednesday evening the grocery order must be placed.
How would you design the process?
Almost everyone suggests some variation of email.
Send menus.
Receive replies.
Collect attachments.
Copy information.
Import data.
Refresh Power Query.
Generate totals.
Produce grocery lists.
Some produce sophisticated solutions.
Some produce elegant solutions.
Some use Modern Excel.
Others use traditional Excel.
But they all share something.
Moving information around becomes the work.
Now compare that with a different approach.
On Monday, Gordon simply opens a spreadsheet and clicks today’s menu.
Done.
Employees open their own tiny spreadsheet.
Today’s menu appears automatically.
They choose their meals.
Close the workbook.
Done.
The organiser opens one workbook.
The grocery list already exists.
Done.
No collecting.
No consolidating.
No copying.
No refreshing.
No emailing.
No manual assembly.
The data simply flows.
Every business leader I have shown these two approaches reaches exactly the same conclusion.
They overwhelmingly prefer the second.
Not because it uses clever technology.
Not because it uses databases.
Not because it is technically impressive.
Because the business outcome is obviously better.
Employers Buy Outcomes, Not Techniques
This is the insight that changed my own career.
Employers never paid me more because I knew another Excel function.
They paid me more because I consistently produced outcomes that nobody else seemed able to produce.
That distinction transformed temporary assignments into multi-year engagements.
It transformed ordinary contract rates into consulting rates.
It transformed Excel from being viewed as a personal productivity tool into a platform for enterprise process innovation.
Ironically, the underlying techniques are neither difficult nor numerous.
They simply are not widely taught.
The Biggest Opportunity in Excel
This is why I believe the biggest opportunity in Excel education does not lie in teaching yet another feature.
Microsoft will continue releasing wonderful new capabilities.
Influencers will continue producing excellent content.
Training providers will continue helping millions improve their spreadsheet skills.
All of that remains valuable.
But alongside that enormous ecosystem sits a tiny, largely ignored body of knowledge that changes everything.
Not because it makes spreadsheets prettier.
Not because it introduces another feature.
But because it changes what employers see.
When business leaders see somebody who can eliminate manual processes, connect disconnected departments, create auditability, improve governance and simplify enterprise workflows using nothing more exotic than Excel and a simple shared data store, they no longer see “an Excel person.”
They see someone who understands business.
And business understanding has always commanded a premium.
Perhaps the greatest irony of all is this.
The knowledge required to produce those transformational outcomes is dramatically smaller than the mountain of Excel features most people spend years trying to master.
The difference is not how much Excel you know.
The difference is knowing which tiny set of ideas changes everything.
That, I would suggest, is the Excel skill employers actually pay for.
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