The Purple Square Illusion: Why Excel Training Is Solving the Wrong Problem

By Hiran de Silva

While waiting at University College London Hospital recently—where, incidentally, Ringo Starr once had his tonsils removed and George Orwell took his final breath—I found myself listening to a spirited discussion about Excel training. It reminded me just how deeply flawed our approach to learning Excel has become. We are mastering the wrong craft.

In the world of Excel, there’s no shortage of enthusiasm. From YouTube tutorials to TikTok hacks, there’s a constant stream of guidance on formulas, functions, and new features like Power Query, Lambdas, and Python integration. Yet despite all this education, the needle doesn’t move.

Why?

Because we’re training people to get better at painting purple squares—meticulously and beautifully—without realizing that what management actually needs is for the entire wall to be painted purple.

The Purple Square vs. the Spray Gun

Let me explain with a metaphor.

Imagine a massive wall. A thousand workers are each assigned a tiny one-centimeter square. They are trained in the best techniques to fill it in with a precise shade of purple. They obsess over clean edges, the right brushes, and efficient wrist movements. Managers supervise the square-painting process, making sure everyone sticks to their patch.

Now zoom out.

From management’s perspective, the goal isn’t perfect purple squares. It’s a uniformly painted wall—efficiently, affordably, and with minimal fuss.

In that light, all this training—however rigorous—becomes absurd. Because a single spray gun could do the job better, faster, and more consistently. Yet nobody introduces the spray gun. Why?

Because we’re all so focused on getting better at coloring within the lines.

Excel Is Not the Problem. Our Perspective Is.

When people complain that “no one wants to learn Excel,” they’re usually referring to low adoption of advanced features. But this overlooks a more fundamental issue: What are we learning Excel for?

If you’re a hobbyist, freelancer, or small business owner, you might never need Power Query, let alone enterprise architecture. Your spreadsheets serve you directly. You are the user, the developer, and the consumer.

But in large organizations, spreadsheets are part of mission-critical business processes. And yet—they’re built like hobby projects: as if only one person will ever use them. This is a catastrophic mismatch.

Enterprise spreadsheets should be designed for integration, automation, and collaboration. They should support systems, not just tasks. Yet Excel is still widely treated like digital paper.

Why Management Doesn’t See the Impact

Management is interested in one thing: process. End-to-end, efficient, and reliable process.

They don’t care if you’ve mastered Lambdas or nailed Dynamic Arrays. They care if your solution eliminates risk, reduces manual intervention, and delivers results faster.

And this is where most Excel training fails. It’s not that the skills are useless. It’s that they’re not tied to outcomes that matter at the management level.

We’re training people to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic—crafting pixel-perfect spreadsheets while ignoring the iceberg.

A Better Way Forward

Here’s the real opportunity: Stop training people to perfect their purple squares. Start training them to identify processes that need re-engineering—and give them the tools and mindset to introduce spray guns.

It’s not just about technical skills. It’s about:

• Strategic thinking
• Systems design
• Enterprise architecture
• Communication with stakeholders

When someone within an organization identifies a clunky, fragmented process and introduces a spreadsheet-based system that solves it end-to-end? That person becomes indispensable.

I know. I’ve done it.

Years ago, I was hired on a short-term temp contract. I wasn’t expected to change anything—just fill in my purple square. But I saw the bigger picture. With encouragement from one of the managers, I demonstrated a re-engineered, Excel-based solution to top management. They tripled my pay. They asked me to stay indefinitely. And I repeated this transformation at four other companies. In one case, a £6,000 engagement turned into £1.4 million over six years—because I introduced a spray gun.

The Hard Truth: Not Everyone Will Embrace This

There are two kinds of management:

1. Those who are threatened by powerful, efficient solutions.
2. Those who are excited by them—and willing to invest.

You need to find the second kind. And if you’re the one who introduces the spray gun, you become the only game in town.

That’s what Excel training should prepare people for—not just to be better technicians, but better architects. Not just to follow process, but to reimagine it.

Final Thought

If you’re an Excel professional, ask yourself:

Are you learning how to paint better purple squares?

Or are you preparing to show management a spray gun?

The difference could define your career.