Each minute is a little thing, and yet, with respect to our personal productivity, to manage the minute is the secret of success. —

Joseph B Wirthlin

COURSES that specifically focus on training in the use of productivity software like MS Excel and MS Word are not typically offered in MBA programmes. In Jamaica I know of at least two MBA programmes that offer such a course, but most would stipulate that knowledge of these applications is a requirement before starting the MBA. Many office workers do use these applications, but sadly, many only skim the surface of the vast potential, and labouriously take hours and days to complete tasks that could take minutes or even seconds.

My philosophy with these office tools is that the more I know how to exploit the features, the less time I need to spend using them to do my work.

Let me give you a personal story. In a previous job I had, I realised that I had to use MS Excel fairly often, as I frequently had to be manipulating and analysing data. At that time I knew just as much Excel as my colleagues and many other Jamaican office workers — I could add, subtract, sort, and even use the sum function! I was not satisfied, so I bought an Excel book and studied it vigorously. (Afterwards, I realised that there are so many Excel resources on the Internet that buying the book was unnecessary). Anyway, I learnt so much that I ended up as a volunteer at the organisation’s training centre — teaching Advanced Excel!

The point, though, is that one day I saw a colleague doing some work using Excel, and she was in the second day of what seemed like at least an entire week’s work. I had a look and was convinced that what she was doing could be done much faster. So I asked her to hold on and did a quick review. Minutes later I returned and demonstrated how Excel actually had the features that she was doing manually. She was done within 10 minutes! So she already wasted one day, and was planning to waste four more days, doing something in Excel that could be done in less than ten minutes! In jest she started quarrelling — I should have passed by earlier, then she would not have wasted that whole day!

I really had fun while doing those Excel classes. Every now and then when I demonstrate some of Excel’s features and functions, I would hear exasperated groans typically sounding like this — “If I had only known!… I have been spending a whole day doing that for the last three years, and it could take two minutes?!”, or “Where were you when I was wasting a whole week doing this if it can take three minutes!” or — I love this one — “Lord… I could have left work earlier so many days!”

Most people in a supervisory or managerial role have to manipulate some data. Even if you have sophisticated information systems, there will come a time when you have to whip out the “good ‘ol Excel” to manipulate some employee, or production or customer data. It is therefore good to know what it can do, and when to use any of its many, many features. It can be easily estimated that most people use probably less than five per cent of the features of these ubiquitous tools — and lest you believe I am marketing for Microsoft, there are now also free versions of these applications available (like Google Docs) for use with the same robust set of features.

Let me give you an example. Suppose you obtained an Excel file from the Sales Department with, say, 27,000 rows of information about sales quantity and amounts for the thirty different products in the four sales regions by the ten sales agents for the last three months. The information is all random and ad hoc, but you quickly need to have a good understanding of sales by agents per region, as well as the product sales per region and by sales agents, and by month. Sounds a bit unwieldy but this is by no means a unique requirement.

Pivot Tables

OK — so many persons, as I said before, know how to sum. They also know how to sort in Excel. They may then resort to carrying out a series of sorts and sums, probably extracting different sets of rows and placing into separate worksheets to get this done. If you work fast you could get this done in about two hours.

Not bad — except that if you knew about Pivot Tables in Excel, you could have done it in one single minute! Pivot Table is a powerful feature in Excel that is surprisingly simple to use. Even more surprising is the number of active Excel users that either never heard of it, or heard of it but are too scared to even try it.

All that Pivot Table does is to consolidate all the data into a table showing the total of all the selected items. It is also dynamic, and allows the user to specify which items you want the accumulations for, and recalculates if the data gets adjusted. This is a really neat feature and is really a shame that many more people do not know about it.

Mastering sales data

Let us try one more. Say, we have some 8,000 rows of sales data for twelve different departments — just the department code, item number, item description, quantity and price in each row. Say, I now want the subtotal for the price for each department. Easy you say, I need to sort the data on department code. Very good — as that is indeed necessary — but what next?

Easy again you say, next I scroll to the end of each department, create a row space after the last item for that department, and do the sum function in that row in the price column.

Hold it! That is good, except that you may take 30 minutes doing that — and you may make an error. How about using the Subtotal feature under Data on the Ribbon? This is another really neat feature that allows you to dynamically switch between viewing the subtotals only (that is devoid of all the detail data), the grand total only, or the subtotals at the end of each change in department.

Wow! You can tell that I am passionate about tools that can boost productivity. Many of you reading this have the potential to explode your productivity. It is all sitting there on the computer in front of you!

Kenroy Wedderburn is an MBA part-time lecturer. Send your e-mails to drkwedderburn@gmail.com.