A Revolution Built on YOU

Does This Sound Familiar?

In the movie Fight Club, Edward Norton's character refers to the people he meets on airplanes as "single serving friends" — people he befriends for three hours and never sees again. I have a unique perspective on this phenomenon, thanks to a real-world example that is relevant to this book.

A woman takes her seat for a cross-country business flight and is pleased to see that her seatmate appears to be a reasonably normal fellow. They strike up a friendly conversation, and when he asks her what she does for a living, she gives the usual reply: "I'm a marketing analyst."

That answer satisfies 99% of her single-serving friends, at which point the conversation typically turns to something else. However, this guy is the exception, and asks the dreaded follow-up question: "Oh, neat! What does that mean, actually?"

She sighs, ever so slightly, because the honest answer to that question always bores people to death. Worse than that actually: it often makes the single-serving friend recoil a bit, and express a sentiment bordering on pity.

But she's a factual sort of person, so she gives a factual answer: "well, basically I work with Excel all day, making PivotTables." She fully expects this to be a setback in the conversation, a point on which she and her seatmate share no common ground.

Does this woman's story sound familiar? Do you occasionally find yourself in the same position?

Well imagine her surprise when this particular single-serving friend actually becomes excited after hearing her answer! He lights up — it's the highlight of his day to meet her.

Because, you see, on this flight, she sat down next to me. And I have some exciting news for people like her, which probably includes you :-)

Excel Pros: The World is Changing in Your Favor

If you are reading this, I can say confidently that the world is on the verge of an incredible discovery: it is about to realize how immensely valuable you are. In large part, this book is aimed at helping you reap the full rewards available to you during this revolution.

That probably sounds pretty appealing, but why am I so comfortable making bold pronouncements about someone I have never met? Well, this is where the single-serving friend thing comes in: I have met many people like you over the years, and to me, you are very much 'my people.'

In fact, for many years while I worked at Microsoft, it was my job to meet people like you. I was an engineer on the Excel team, and I led a lot of the efforts to design new functionality for relatively advanced users.

Meeting those people, and watching them work, was crucial, so I traveled to find them. When I was looking for people to meet, the only criteria I applied was this: you had to use Excel for ten or more hours per week.

I found people like that (like you!) all over the world, in places ranging from massive banks in Europe to the back rooms of automobile dealerships in Portland, Oregon. There are also many of you working at Microsoft itself, working in various finance, accounting, and marketing roles, and I spent a lot of time with them as well (more on this later).

Over those years, I formed a 'profile' of these 'ten hour' spreadsheet people I met. Again, see if this sounds familiar.

Attributes of an Excel Pro:

• They grab data from one or more sources.

• They prep the data, often using VLOOKUP.

• They then create pivots over the prepared data.

• Sometimes they subsequently index into the resulting pivots, using formulas, to produce polished reports. Other times, the pivots themselves serve as the reports.

• They then share the reports with their colleagues, typically via email or by saving to a network drive.

• They spend at least half of their time re-creating the same reports, updated with the latest data, on a recurring basis.

At first, it seemed to be a coincidence that there was so much similarity in the people I was meeting. But over time it became clear that this was no accident. It started to seem more like a law of physics — an inevitable state of affairs. Much like the heat and pressure in the earth's crust seize the occasional pocket of carbon and transform it into a diamond, the demands of the modern world 'recruit' a certain kind of person and forge them into an Excel Pro.

Aside: Most Excel Pros do not think of themselves as Pros: I find that most are quite modest about their skills. However, take it from someone who has studied Excel usage in depth: if you fit the bulleted criteria above, you are an Excel Pro. Wear the badge proudly.

I can even put an estimate on how many of you are out there. At Microsoft we used to estimate that there were 300 million users of Excel worldwide. This number was disputed, and might be too low, especially today. It's a good baseline, nothing more. But that was all users of Excel — from the most casual to the most expert. Our instrumentation data further showed us that only 10% of all Excel users created PivotTables.

'Create' is an important word here — much more than 10% consume pivots made by others, but only 10% are able to create them from scratch. Creating pivots, then, turns out to be an overwhelmingly accurate indicator of whether someone is an Excel Pro. We might as well call them Pivot Pros.

You may feel quite alone at your particular workplace, because statistically speaking you are quite rare — less than 0.5% of the world's population has your skillset! But in absolute numbers you are far from alone in the world — in fact, you are one of approximately thirty million people. If Excel Pros had conferences or conventions, it would be quite a sight.

I, too, fit the definition of an Excel Pro. It is no accident that I found myself drawn to the Excel team after a few years at Microsoft, and it is no accident that I ultimately left to start an Excel / PowerPivot-focused business (and blog). While I have been using the word 'you' to describe Excel Pros, I am just as comfortable with the word 'we.'

As I said up front, I am convinced that our importance is about to explode into the general consciousness. After all, we are already crucial.

Our Importance Today

As proof of how vital we are, here's another story from Microsoft, one that borders on legend. The actual event transpired about ten years ago and the details are hazy, but ultimately it's about you; about us.

Someone from the SQL Server database team was meeting with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. They were trying to get his support for a 'business intelligence' (BI) initiative within Microsoft — to make the company itself a testbed for some new BI products in development at that time. If Steve supported the project, the BI team would have a much easier time gaining traction within the accounting and finance divisions at Microsoft.

In those days, Microsoft had a bit of a 'prove it to me' culture. It was a common approach to 'play dumb' and say something like, "okay, tell me why this is valuable." Which is precisely the sort of thing Steve said to the BI folks that day.

To which they gave an example, by asking a question like this: "If we asked you how much sales of Microsoft Office grew in South America last year...