Why you should NOT lead by Excel

Leadership is at the heart of every business. Great leadership removes obstacles of daily work, helps information flow better and reinforces psychological safety and job satisfaction.

Organizations with great leadership can attract better talent and keep them in their teams. This provides lasting competitive advantage. Leadership is the social process of turning strategy into actions by creating a common goal and the steps to be taken to get there.

Leadership is hard to quantify. But we can certainly say, that good leadership is as important for business success as market fit. That is one reason most organizations want to digitize their leadership processes. However, it has not been easy. According to Gartner, 81% of boards have not made progress toward or achieved their digital business transformation goals. The Leadership by Excel strategy certainly isn’t doing the management or boards any favors.

Main issues in Excel leadership are version control and follow-up

The common ways most organizations start is by planning strategies and operations in Excel and PowerPoint. The choice of Excel as a leadership solution is understandable, as most organizations already use it. Availability, skills or familiarity will not become obstacles with Excel. Surely spreadsheet software lowers the threshold for starting to track leadership processes, but from the perspective of result-oriented leadership, choosing Excel means missing out on true collaboration and has high risks.

Excel may work well as a listing tool to get your processes and responsibilities on paper, but its shortcomings become apparent very quickly when leadership wants to have a tool to support innovation and provide additional information for decision making. The first issues are encountered with version control and conflicting copies. The bigger issues are the inability to create accountable and measurable activity from the strategy.The tool becomes the focus of work rather than the value it creates. People optimize their personal responsibilities in isolation when they are not rewarded for contributing to other people’s responsibilities.

Leadership by Excel guides operations to tamper with activities and metrics at the last minute. Usually right before the next review, which naturally does not produce the desired results. Only some of the strategic goals are handled with the care they require, and the rest are left waiting for the next leadership squeeze in the calendar.

Use digital leadership tools for lasting benefits

While it is problematic and often frustrating, leadership by Excel can be a key step in understanding the potential of digital leadership. It can be applied fast and easily, and shapes people’s thoughts towards holistic digital leadership.

That is why instead of returning to their original leadership ways, organizations that tried to lead with Excel instead started looking for other solutions. Many organizations feel that the best alternative to Excel leadership is an information system built to meet their own needs. However, everyone knows how extensive and frustrating large-scale information system projects tend to become.

However, the availability and timeliness of information should not be insurmountable requirements. And they really aren’t. Modern leadership tools, such as Fingertip, respond to all the above challenges without any major adjustments. With Fingertip’s help, for example, the responsibility for actions is conducted in a guided manner and the designated responsible person receives automatic reminders of the tasks assigned to him/her.

In this way, the tool controls operations in an automated way and the time and other resources of leaders are saved for more productive work. In a digital leadership tool like Fingertip, these problems are solved as if by themselves. When leadership is carried out on one secure platform, we can be sure that an up-to-date and accurate situational picture is available for decision-making and development.

Leadership in the modern work era

Fingertip’s leadership tools are designed for modern business and support the systematic development of leadership. They are ideally suited for supporting different leadership models of every organization. It is natively built on Microsoft Teams and makes processes around strategic decisions, meetings, projects and activities accountable, visible and collaborative.

With a digital leadership tool, creating an up-to-date and accurate situational picture can be done in a guided manner. The allocation of resources is easy as all the necessary information is available in one automatically updated place.

With an effective leadership tool, finding bottlenecks and driving change is faster and easier. With shared situational awareness it is possible to remove the obstacles of growth, find new opportunities to utilize in business and implement them faster.

Fingertip’s easy-to-use range of leadership tools does not require months to be deployed like traditional heavy information system projects. Testing Fingertip’s functionality is smoothly, and implementation can be done in less than one hour. From day one all users will enjoy the benefits of structured leadership information and communication. Less stress, less information overload, more clarity, better productivity and better job satisfaction.

Learn more about Fingertip’s solutions for Leadership teams or Product portfolio management and start leading better without Excel today!

Frequently asked questions:

1. What are some common challenges organizations face when transitioning from Excel to a digital leadership tool like Fingertip?
   Firstly, moving existing data from Excel spreadsheets to Fingertip can be complex. Organizations must ensure data accuracy, maintain formatting consistency, and address any discrepancies. We will help make this smooth for you. Migrating historical data while preserving its integrity is crucial. Secondly, introducing Fingertip requires training employees on its features, functionalities, and best practices. Change management becomes essential to help users adapt to the new tool seamlessly. Clear communication, user guides, and ongoing support are vital. We ensure adoption with world-class training and guides.
2. How does the cost of implementing a digital leadership tool compare to the potential productivity gains and long-term benefits?
   The cost of Fingertip is always lower than the cost of poor leadership with inadequate tools. We save up to an hour per day per user from misalignment, miscommunication and searching for information. Leaders benefit even more, as more data from knowledge work becomes available for them.
3. How does Fingertip integrate with other existing business systems and workflows within an organization?
   Fingertip integrates seamlessly to the M365 experience, mainly in Microsoft Teams. You can easily refer to files in your SharePoint also in Fingertip.