My organization is a small firm engaged in supplying doors and hardware to the commercial construction industry, so we have little need for capabilities related to Excel, right? Well, not exactly….

Leadership at my company is aging and is mired in the view of technology from a decade ago, but they are in love with Excel (although they are only familiar with the most basic functions and capabilities).  Their solution to EVERY issue is to use Excel spreadsheets to find solutions, manage information, or make a decision. In turn, those of us that are tasked with executing and managing these issues have begun to refer to Excel as “The Hammer”.  You see, even if a bullet proof case can be made for managing information through Access, SharePoint, or other industry specific software, leadership wants to use Excel. After all, it is the hammer to every nail!

This leads me to one of the main reasons that I feel that improving my Excel spreadsheet skills will be critical: efficiency. Efficiency with Excel allows me to better handle my workload, more effectively represent the data I have compiled, and more quickly derive time sensitive conclusions to complex issues. Currently, I feel like my skills lead me to taking circuitous routes to reach my destinations, so this is the reason my goal is to spend the summer improving efficiency. There are countless Excel methodologies and formulas that I plan on skimming briefly to gain an understanding of their power, but I intend to focus my personal journey on isolating the key skills such as the top 20 list and polishing my techniques.

One of the techniques that I will be using this semester is to learn by teaching at my workplace. Few of my coworkers and direct reports have Excel skills beyond rudimentary data entry and I have been looked to as an “expert” in the past. Although I hardly deserve the expert label, I find that teaching the software allows for introspection that reveals my weaknesses. In the past 2 weeks, I have spent time with experienced and beginner users working through the basic methodologies and applications for pivot table use. Pivot tables allow our estimators to estimate more quickly, our project managers to more accurately manage material, and our engineers to more effectively isolate and coordinate the details of a project. My goal is to employ my “learn by teaching” idea throughout the summer, hopefully resulting in not only an increased skillset that I can leverage moving forward, but also effecting positive change on our organizational efficiencies.

I invite any comments on my plan or the nature of my post. If you have never tried it, experiment with learning by teaching and see if it works for you. Time to get back to swinging my hammer…