Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. ~George Santayana
“To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer. ” ~Farmer’s Almanac
With that, I thought that I’d share with you some of my missteps in the hopes that you can get it right the first time.
1) Being stubborn. I didn’t seek out a product like Monarch when I needed one. Instead, for years I wrestled with semi-compatible Windows and DOS programs, and did my best to get usable results. But it took an awful lot of work, and every step had to be repeated every time I needed new data. The upside, if there is one, is that I did get pretty adept at it, and those thought- processes may well benefit me from time to time still. But if I were starting today, I wouldn’t advise trying the same. Maybe you’ve wound up here looking for some Excel help. Listen closely now: if you do any significant amount of data analysis or summarization with Excel, you owe it to yourself to seriously look at Monarch. The risk is small, and the benefits are tremendous.
2) Going half-way. Initially, I didn’t take Monarch seriously enough. It’s true. I understood the utility of it, and saw how I could add some value to static reports, but I got caught up in the day-to-day “just get it done” mentality and lost valuable time in which I could have really capitalized on the software’s deceptively deep feature set. It was only when things settled down somewhat that my growing experience revealed what was hiding in plain view, as it were, and I became better able to do some things, or with more flexibility, or even faster. I encourage you to invest in yourself and/or your staff early, and reap the rewards over the long term.
3) Over-confidence. I suppose that’s what the real problem was. For a long time I tried to devise a way to produce a dashboard-type system that not only would produce clear, meaningful and accurate information, but would be easy to regularly update and publish. Oh, and it had to be inexpensive too. One day I finally found a site that demonstrated the exact types of outputs I had in mind, and made the claims that it was generated by an easy to update system. Confident in my Excel skills, I thought that if I just read enough of the freely available documentation offered, I’d be able to figure out exactly how it was done. There was somewhat of a personal challenge there as well, I admit. Well, weeks later I gave up trying to second guess the author, and just bought Charley Kyd’s Dashboard Reporting with Excel. As a Monarch user, I know that the moment you read Charley’s tactics you’ll visualize countless opportunities for integrating your Monarch work with his Excel techniques to produce great systems.
I haven’t failed, I’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work. – Thomas Edison
Making mistakes can be terrific experiences, as they can lead you to your best successes. I’m sure that I could list a lot more of my relevant mistakes – it’s not for a lack of material – but that’ll do for today.
Now go make some mistakes and excel with Monarch.
