Spreadsheets rule the world 📊 David Lyford-Smith, Spreadsheet Warriors

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Episode at a glance:

GUEST: David Lyford-Smith

COMMUNITY: Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales

HOSTS: Mia Quagliarello

“The question is ‘how do I keep my volunteers on track?’ because they're hugely motivated.” - David Lyford-Smith

Show Notes

If you spend a lot of time working with spreadsheets, you know they have a special power to rule the world. You can do almost anything with them from creating a shopping list to financial planning and analysis. Spreadsheets' powers lie in the fact they are accessible to people who aren’t programmers and coders. But if even just one cell is wrong, it can wreak terrible havoc.

David Lyford-Smith works for the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). In the 1990s, ICAEW started a tech faculty to serve as internal experts researching matters of technology and automation affecting accountants. In 2013, it was apparent that the excel content was the most popular, and a collective of “excel warriors” was spun up into its own community. 

David raised his hand to help steer the direction of the work and joined several thousands of chartered accountants and others seeking to mitigate spreadsheet risk in workplaces around the world. They’ve created accessible materials like twenty principles for good spreadsheet practice as a guide for those who use spreadsheets daily and for those without special spreadsheet skills.

We talked with David about the power of spreadsheets and the way in which he is channeling the enthusiasm of excel warriors to help each other and to help the public mitigate spreadsheet risk.

Just like when building a fire, there’s an order of operations you can follow to cultivate communities that burn bright.

In our book, “Get Together: How to build community with your people,” we take you through three stages of building a community: sparking the flame, stoking the fire, and passing the torch. 

Here’s David on the third step, Passing the Torch.

Defining “WHO.”

In the late 19th century, Queen Victoria signed a royal charter that empowered ICAEW to further the practice and theory of accounting. Under these marching orders, the work that the Excel community and the greater ICEAE professional body do serves both certified accountants and the public.

Accountants can subscribe to their work with courses, resources, and the tools to maintain their professional qualifications. The broader public can access documents the ICAEW and excel warriors share widely like twenty principles for good spreadsheet practice.

David at a gathering with other “Spreadsheet Warriors.”

Supporting leaders through documentation.

David has run into one problem again and again. Someone has made an amazing, whizzy spreadsheet but as soon as they go out of town or move on to another job, it falls apart and doesn’t work anymore. Sometimes David is able to patch it up, but sometimes reviving the magic spreadsheet proves impossible. 

David explained that “bad spreadsheet use is definitely not contained to inexperienced users. Experienced users are terrible at creating really complicated spreadsheets and not explaining how anything works.”

Documentation ensures that a spreadsheet will last beyond the original creator’s involvement with it. It’s not reliant on the creator for other people to use it. 

Supercharging leaders.

Excel is a “geeky pursuit” that people get very into. So David’s problem is not motivating volunteers but rather, channeling their energy in productive ways. 

One of the hardest tasks David encounters as a community leader is putting all this time and energy into their resources and then making sure it gets to people. One hand-raiser, Simon Hearst, has the perspective that perhaps the world doesn’t take spreadsheets seriously enough. He challenges David often that the Excel community doesn’t even take themself seriously enough asking questions like, “have we gotten the message out to enough people? Could we be doing more?”

To respond to Simon, David reflected on how the Excel Warriors could better expose new people to their ideas and skills especially early in their career. He’s experimented with hanging out in watering holes like Excel Reddit and collaborations with experts to get the word out further and supercharge the work their community leaders create. 

Bonus! A few Excel resources that David shared with us.

• ICAEW - Publications on spreadsheet competency, financial modeling, and twenty principles for good spreadsheet practice + more.

• EuSpRing - A collection of spreadsheet horror stories and resources.

• Excel is Fun - YouTube channel with 3,000+ videos to learn from with learning playlist structured as courses.

• Excel Reddit - David is one of the active contributors answering questions.

• Mr. Excel - Website to learn about excel.

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👋🏻Say hi to David and learn more about the Spreadsheet Warriors of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

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