This blog now contains all the chapters of the book, with the conclusion below. If you have lasted this far, congratulations and thanks! I hope you are inspired and empowered to go forth and create elegant spreadsheets!
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Conclusion
We began this journey not knowing where it would lead us, with a general unease about the state of our communications and the risks hidden particularly in the Excel files we send and receive every day. This brought us to a candid acknowledgement: principles do matter, and are worthy of an intervention to reestablish them as the foundation of our work.
I’ve articulated four principles in particular.
Purpose: every work must have an object – a customer, a consumer, a reader, a patron, a fan. Product specifications are just the surface. The real fulfillment is in the discovery and realization of implicit needs and desires, high among them the need to understand and to be understood.
Integrity: the taking of pride in one’s work is one of the rare virtuous “takes”, like taking responsibility. Integrity is like the unseen welds on the beams that hold up the bridge. It is what you do right without being asked or asking for return, because it is right.
Transparency: openness and honesty in communications is more than not misleading nor omitting truth. It is anticipating and preempting doubt, confusion and mistrust. It’s presenting options and revealing details with clean and concise language and format.
Elegance: the union of science and art is one of life’s greatest goals. Elegance as a principle holds strength and beauty equally necessary. It connects process and product, giving them both value. It connects producer and consumer, giving them mutual appreciation.
These principles are not new or narrow, they are as old and universal as nature itself. They are easy to understand, and agreeable to everyone. Yet based on the spreadsheet evidence, they are easily overlooked and ignored.
The more things we own and the more space we have to hold them, the more they demand organization. Without organization we can’t find what we need, and we lose both function and form.
Excel is a big space to hold our stuff. It demands a strategy to keep what’s important secure and accessible, to save us from hoarding, and to make a place where our guests feel welcome and appreciated.
Excel itself is but a convenient, fertile ground where principles can germinate and be nurtured. With practice their value will become increasingly explicit and evident in other aspects of work and life.
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