Much Ado — and Then There’s Nothing Left to Do Manually
By Hiran de Silva
Tim is very good at Excel.
In fact, Tim takes his Excel skills seriously.
He follows the latest developments. He watches the videos. He learns the new functions. He knows PivotTables, Power Query, dynamic arrays and all the other things a modern Excel professional is expected to know.
Every Friday, Tim has an important job.
The company operates 50 warehouses. Each warehouse sends Tim a spreadsheet containing its latest stock figures.
Tim collects the 50 spreadsheets, brings the information together and produces a PivotTable for his boss.
His boss looks at it, decides who needs to see it that week, and emails the report to the appropriate managers.
Then everybody goes home.
Until next Friday.
When Tim does it again.
Tim is good at his job.
But there is another Excel person in the same organisation.
His name is Reg.
And everybody knows something rather interesting about Reg.
Reg earns three times as much as Tim.
That raises an obvious question.
Why?
They both use Excel.
They work in the same organisation.
They may even sit only a few desks apart.
So what does Reg know about Excel that Tim doesn’t?
Perhaps Reg knows more functions.
Perhaps Reg knows more VBA.
Perhaps he has mastered Python in Excel.
Perhaps he is an expert in Power Query, Power Pivot, LAMBDA or Office Scripts.
But suppose none of those things explains it.
Suppose the difference between Tim and Reg has surprisingly little to do with their knowledge of Excel features.
Then we have a much more interesting question.
What Does Reg Actually Do?
Here is the strange answer.
Not very much.
At least, not in the sense that Tim understands work.
Reg doesn’t spend every Friday afternoon collecting 50 spreadsheets.
He doesn’t spend Monday morning producing another report.
He doesn’t have an elaborate month-end routine.
He isn’t employed to repeat a process efficiently.
Reg’s value comes from something completely different.
Reg looks at processes such as Tim’s and asks:
Why are we doing this at all?
Why are 50 warehouses sending 50 spreadsheets?
Why does somebody have to consolidate them?
Why does somebody else have to distribute the result?
Why does this process have to wait until Friday?
Why can’t each warehouse update its information directly into a central structured location?
Why can’t authorised managers retrieve the latest information themselves whenever they need it?
And if Excel is already sitting on everybody’s desktop, why can’t their spreadsheets simply GET and PUT that information?
Suddenly, the question isn’t:
How can we make Tim’s Friday process faster?
It is:
Why does Tim’s Friday process exist?
That is the difference between Tim and Reg.
And it leads us to a phenomenon that many Excel professionals may never have encountered.
Meet the Skunk Works
The term Skunk Works became famous through Lockheed’s legendary advanced development operation.
Its purpose was not to run the company’s normal production processes.
It was to take difficult problems, give a small group of capable people unusual freedom, cut through conventional bureaucracy, experiment rapidly and produce things that might otherwise take a large organisation years to develop.
That concept has spread far beyond aerospace.
A Skunk Works is not primarily defined by the technology it uses.
It is defined by the way it thinks and operates.
Small.
Trusted.
Experimental.
Fast.
Self-motivated.
Proactive.
And, crucially, given enough freedom to challenge the assumption that the existing way of doing something must continue.
That is Reg.
Reg is effectively an Excel Skunk Works.
Tim Is Reactive. Reg Is Proactive.
Tim receives a requirement.
He fulfils it.
Someone asks for a report. Tim builds the report.
Someone sends him 50 files. Tim consolidates the 50 files.
Someone wants the process faster. Tim finds a faster way of doing it.
There is nothing wrong with that.
Organisations need capable people who respond reliably to requirements.
But Reg operates differently.
Reg notices the problem before anybody writes the requirement.
He sees the 50 spreadsheets travelling around the organisation and starts wondering why.
He notices that ten people are manually reconciling something and asks whether the reconciliation needs to exist.
He sees managers waiting for Friday’s report and wonders whether they could have the information on Tuesday morning — or right now.
Nobody necessarily asks Reg to do this.
That is the point.
He is self-motivated.
And when Reg sees an opportunity, he doesn’t necessarily start by writing a proposal for a six-month transformation programme.
He builds something.
A prototype.
A proof of concept.
Something small enough to create quickly but convincing enough for management to see what is possible.
This Changes the Economics of Excel
This is where the difference in pay starts to make sense.
Tim’s economic value is connected to the work he performs.
Reg’s economic value is conn
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