Being in finance and accounting, I see this situation all the time. People, usually younger, doing a flurry of activity in a spreadsheet to “get the numbers”. Often, this flurry is repeated month after month.
Why does this happen? Primarily, it happens because it is enforced by many management structures. If people look busy, they must be productive.
This brings me to the old story of the guy who bought a second car just to leave it in the work parking lot. After all, if his car is constantly at work, he must be there too, working diligently.
I recently quipped about how Warren Buffett spends most of his time and how he should be fired in the current surveillance economy. He spends a lot of his time just alone and thinking. How is that measured? Should electrodes be connected to his head? Can you believe it, people spending time just thinking? How dare people think! LOL
When a person is constantly changing their spreadsheet each month for the same process, it tells me that they aren’t thinking and haven’t structured the spreadsheet appropriately. Having a well-structured format of relationships among cells is the spreadsheet’s claim to fame and why spreadsheets were originally developed. Without the structure, the work might as well be done with paper and pencil (Probably, it could get done almost as quickly.)!
So next time you see the flurry of activity, you need to question why is this tremendous waste of time being done over and over again. Who wants to pay for the same yardage over and over again? Not me!
Be smart, be well-read, be aware and be successful.
