Two weeks ago, I posted an article on LinkedIn with a splash screen featuring a Flash illustration, extending the conversation about the spreadsheet mindset into collaborative architecture. Despite receiving 278 impressions and a thoughtful comment from Jan Hornak, it hasn’t gained much traction. Jan’s comment critiqued the “ossified and incredibly simplistic approach of influencers to Excel,” which, as he pointed out, harms the broader Excel community. His frustration mirrors my own experiences with Excel content on LinkedIn, particularly how posts aimed at appealing to the masses do little to elevate our understanding of Excel in enterprise contexts.
Social media-driven Excel content appeals to the broader demographic at the bottom of the pyramid, but there’s no clear migration path upwards. Most Excel training—especially the “advanced” techniques—focuses on single-user scenarios: an individual working on an isolated task, on a single spreadsheet, on a single machine. This approach is valuable, but only for a limited context. When considering the larger, more complex world of enterprise processes, these techniques simply don’t hold up.
The Pyramid of Excel Skills: What’s Missing?
The Financial Modeling World Cup (FMWC) produced a pyramid that purportedly charts the roadmap for Excel skills, with the summit featuring Power Query, dynamic arrays, and other advanced Excel tools. However, this roadmap still adheres to a single-user mindset. It doesn’t account for the collaborative processes and shared responsibilities that are essential in most business environments.
The tools listed at the top of this pyramid are impressive, but they operate within the confines of the spreadsheet itself. In a company-wide, collaborative context, such features fall short. The reality is that enterprise-level solutions require tools and architectures that go beyond isolated spreadsheets, connecting data and people across the organization in real time.
A useful analogy is painting one-centimeter squares on a wall. While you can focus on mastering the sharpness and precision of the small square, what happens when you need to paint the entire wall? Do we hire more people? In an enterprise context, the right tool would be a spray gun, not a fine brush for a small square. Similarly, in Excel, the tools and techniques that serve well in small-scale, isolated scenarios become inefficient when scaled up to enterprise-wide processes. We need to apply ‘advanced’ Excel that is relevant to the wider process. This is where the popular “advanced” Excel techniques hit their limit.
Misleading “Advanced” Techniques and the Collaborative Process
The content labeled as “advanced” on social media still largely focuses on the needs of a single user. As a result, users working in enterprise environments find themselves frustrated when these tools don’t meet their needs. They follow the wrong path, believing that mastering these single-user tools will lead them to excel in a collaborative, business-wide context. But this path leads straight into what I call the swamp—a confusing mix of unscalable, rigid solutions that can’t adapt to broader business needs.
One of the biggest challenges is how to educate these users. Many aspire to become more valuable in their workplaces by mastering these “advanced” tools, but the reality is they’re heading down the wrong path. To be a significant force in an organization, the focus should be on collaborative processes, not isolated tasks.
At some point, these users will need to recognize that they’re heading towards a dead end. They’ll need to pivot toward a more holistic approach—one that considers the entire flow of data across the organization rather than focusing on mastering flashy but limited tools.
My Own Experience: The Path to Collaborative Architecture
Let me give you an example of what I mean. In my own career, I’ve had clients across four different industries—clients who, after working with me for a short time, tripled my pay and hired me indefinitely. The reason? I was able to transform their spreadsheets from chaotic, social media-driven techniques into streamlined, data-driven processes that eliminated the need for endless, manual spreadsheet exchanges.
This transformation isn’t just about using the latest Excel feature; it’s about creating an architecture where data flows effortlessly between systems. In these environments, spreadsheets aren’t exchanged like paper forms. Instead, data flows directly to where it needs to go, without the constant passing of files. This shift from the “paper-flow paradigm” to the “data-flow paradigm” is what makes enterprise-level Excel so powerful.
Unfortunately, this kind of architecture is almost entirely ignored in social media content. Influencers, focused on engagement and visibility, direct their attention to the vast demographic at the bottom of the pyramid. Their content teaches keyboard shortcuts, superficial tricks, and isolated techniques that simply don’t scale to the enterprise level.
The Problem with Social Media-Driven Excel Content
The reality is that the people who manage enterprise-level collaborative processes don’t want users to be grouping by or pivoting by themselves. They need processes that centralize this logic, so the results are consistent, scalable, and maintainable.
Yet, when we look at social media content, what do we see? Influencers catering to the masses with keyboard shortcuts and superficial tricks, often misunderstanding or misrepresenting key Excel features. Group By or Pivot By is heralded as groundbreaking, while Pivot Tables are demonized.
Breaking Free from the Pyramid
At some point, people need to understand that the path to real success in Excel isn’t about mastering the latest Power Query trick or dynamic array formula. It’s about moving beyond the single-user mindset and learning how to build collaborative architectures that allow data to flow freely within an organization.
If your goal is to move up the Excel ladder and become a valuable resource within your company, the roadmap offered by influencers won’t get you there. The path they’re showing you leads to a ceiling, a cliff, and ultimately, a swamp of inefficient, unsustainable solutions. To reach the “sweet spot” at the top—where the real money and value lie—you’ll need to step outside that pyramid and learn a completely different way of thinking.
Conclusion: The Choice Is Yours
At the end of the day, the choice is yours. You can continue following the social media-driven path, mastering isolated techniques for single-user tasks. Or, you can pivot and focus on building collaborative, enterprise-level solutions—solutions that management will see as invaluable and will pay you accordingly for.
The results speak for themselves. My pay tripled in multiple companies, not because I followed the social media playbook, but because I demonstrated real value by solving enterprise-wide problems. Now, it’s up to you to decide which path you’ll take.
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