#1 You can’t tell where everyone is in the process.
The first thing you can’t do in Excel is tell where everybody is in the process. You know who’s submitted a spreadsheet to you and that’s about it.
There’s nothing to give you visibility into the work in process. You don’t know who’s started and who hasn’t. You don’t know who’s completed a budget and who hasn’t. You don’t know which ones have been approved at each level up in the food chain and which ones haven’t. You’re kind of flying blind until a spreadsheet winds up in your email. And that makes you reactive instead of proactive.
To see an alternative to living with this shortcoming, check out the video above. It’s less than 3 minutes. Seriously.
