How to Build an Excel Workforce That Thrives in Uncertainty

SUMMARY: An all-Excel strategy—often with help from AI—empowers Excel users to adapt faster, explore more broadly, and contribute more meaningfully during times of extreme change and uncertainty. By turning slow, rigid spreadsheets into agile, resilient flowbooks, Excel Data Plumbers help to build the engaged, innovative workforce that McKinsey calls essential for the 21st century. Here’s an introduction to the new strategy.

Today, business conditions don’t just shift. They toss, buckle, and crash in economic storms and widespread business uncertainties.

Regulations change. CEO optimism surges one quarter and plunges the next. Inflation jumps one month and falls the next. Supply chains are jolted by wars, labor disputes, tariffs, natural disasters, epidemics, and cyberattacks.

In Developing a resilient, adaptable workforce for an uncertain future, McKinsey outlines a blueprint for building resilience and adaptability inside organizations. Their message is clear: “21st-century leaders need an engaged and innovative workforce”—one that can “change course quickly, effectively, and fluidly.”

Most workforces don’t qualify. And even among young, highly educated employees, one skill gap undermines adaptability more than most companies realize:

How they use Excel.

A Cure for Excel Fragility

Most Excel work is fragile, rigid, slow, and notoriously unproductive. When the business veers, most Excel users can’t keep up.

But there’s good news. A simple, powerful strategy can turn ordinary Excel users into agile brainworkers. (See: Excel Users Nimble? You Bet! Here’s Why.)

As I explain in Here’s How to Make Excel Ultra-Productive—With AI’s Help, the Excel Data Plumbing (EDP) Strategy flows data from multiple sources, through stages in their workbooks, and then to Excel output of any kind. And that output can be updated with one Excel Power Query command—period after period.

The workbooks designed to flow data easily are called flowbooks. The general term for the reports, analyses, alerts, forecasts, and such that flowbooks generate is reflows. And the Excel users who create flowbooks and reflows are Excel Data Plumbers. Or just Plumbers.

And Excel Data Plumbers fit almost seamlessly into McKinsey’s blueprint for future-ready organizations.

Why Current Excel Methods Are Such a Bottleneck

In most companies, Excel is everywhere. Reporting, forecasting, analyzing—the lifeblood of decision-making.

But traditional Excel practices haven’t kept up with today’s pace.

Each time something changes—a new data source, a new business unit, a new KPI, a new supply chain—entire workbooks often need to be manually adjusted. (See: The Top 10 Problems Companies Have with Excel—and How to Cure Them, Problem #7.) Copy-paste routines have to be updated. Formulas break. Links go stale.

The result? Teams spend vast amounts of time maintaining workbooks instead of analyzing new realities. Flexibility becomes an illusion. Deadlines loom. Stress skyrockets.

This is the exact opposite of the workforce McKinsey describes.

The Excel Data Plumbing Strategy

The EDP Strategy is a simple idea with huge benefits.

Instead of stitching data into the middle of an analysis, Plumbers flow data into Excel Tables. From there, they flow their data through multiple stages in their flowbook, to one or more reflows. And then, periodically, they update their reflows with one command—period after period.

The changes are profound:

• One command updates everything.
• Structural changes are made once, not dozens of times.
• Errors plummet because manual steps vanish.
• Plumbers become increasingly more productive as they progress along their learning curve, as I explain in: Introducing the Excel Insight Flywheel.

In short, Excel work becomes fluid, responsive, and resilient.

Exactly what McKinsey says a modern workforce must be.

Plumbers Foster Agility at the Front Lines

McKinsey emphasizes that adaptability must exist “deep within the workforce,” not just at the leadership level.

The EDP Strategy delivers that adaptability.

Imagine financial analysts who no longer spend days each month updating and fixing rickety reports. Instead, they update their flowbooks with one command. They can test scenarios, answer new questions (How to Use Excel and AI to Tell Powerful Stories About Your Data), and pivot instantly when conditions change.

Now multiply that capability across dozens, hundreds, even thousands of knowledge workers.

The organization’s nervous system speeds up. Decision-makers gain better information faster. Teams can refocus resources without Excel bottlenecks blocking the way.

This grassroots agility is exactly the resilience McKinsey prescribes.

Plumbing Builds Engagement

McKinsey points to “engagement” as a critical enabler of resilience. Employees must feel energized, challenged, and valued.

The EDP Strategy helps here, too.

When Plumbers slash their Excel scutwork (see The Top 10 Problems Companies Have with Excel—and How to Cure Them, Problem #2), they surge the time for the high-value thinking that originally attracted them to their roles.

Instead of being stuck in Excel drudgery, they spot trends earlier. They identify new risks. They propose new metrics. They find new patterns.

And because the EDP Strategy makes Excel work far easier to maintain, employees feel greater control over their tools—not trapped by them.

Autonomy grows. Mastery grows. Engagement grows.

Exactly the emotional foundation that helps companies weather shocks.

Speed, Learning, and Optionality

McKinsey highlights three specific capabilities that resilient companies build:

• The ability to move quickly
• The ability to learn rapidly
• The ability to keep options open

Excel Data Plumbing—with AI guidance—provides all three.

Plumbers can modify reports on short notice with minor changes to a flowbook. They can experiment with new KPIs, dashboards, and analyses with minimal disruption. And because data flows cleanly through the flowbook, they can easily change course, adapt, or combine reports when leadership pivots.

Plumbers also surge the time and expand the resources available for strategic contributions. They can connect to data series from the Federal Reserve Economic Database (FRED) to add economic context to their work.

They can link to Sharadar data, distributed by Nasdaq.com, to access standardized historical financial data for about 5,400 public companies that are currently listed. That allows them to analyze and benchmark the financial statements of competitors, customers, and industries—in the context of FRED-sourced worldwide financials conditions. That gives them insights few others in the world can discover.

And with access to internal systems through IT credentials, Plumbers can explore patterns across virtually any department that interests them—again in the context of FRED and Sharadar data.

Reclaiming TIME

While the EDP Strategy primarily transforms data handling and reporting, it also unlocks broader mindsets by solving their underlying problem: TIME.

Some Plumbers will simply enjoy their reduced workload. But many will use their newfound freedom to explore new data sources, investigate outliers, search for leading indicators, test current strategic assumptions, and add new achievements to their resumes.

That is, they’ll engage their Insight Flywheel.

Excel Data Plumbing doesn’t merely support engagement. It enables curiosity and exploration.

Even leadership benefits. By reducing maintenance burdens, by giving managers the new insights they need, Plumbers free up their managers’ time and mental energy—giving leaders more bandwidth to focus on culture-building and broader strategic goals, as McKinsey advises.

Becoming a Plumber—with AI’s help—may be the most valuable reskilling experiences an Excel user can undertake.

In a world where volatility is now the default, this transition is priceless.

Why Excel Data Plumbers Matter More Than Ever

For decades, most companies treated Excel skills as a background detail. Something to hire for but not to develop seriously.

But that world is gone. The new world demands that Excel—like every tool inside a company—operate at the speed of change.

The EDP Strategy isn’t just a good-practices upgrade. It truly is a strategic one. It makes companies faster, more resilient, and more prepared for the unexpected. It turns slow, fragile reporting into an engine of adaptability.

It saves mind-numbing costs.

And it gives employees a daily experience of competence and contribution, making them more likely to stay, grow, and lead.

If McKinsey’s blueprint for a resilient workforce is a bridge to the future, the Excel Data Plumbing Strategy paves the road to get there.

Give your Excel users the power to adapt, pivot, and lead—equip them with the EDP Strategy now. Join the EDP Institute today.