Do you know which of your customers is costing you money today?
The accountant asked me this question. I sat in my chair. My chair was made of wood. The wood was hard. I looked at the desk. I looked at the phone.
The accountant waited on the other end of the line. The accountant is a man named Miller. Miller likes facts. Miller likes numbers that balance. Miller asked the question again. I did not have the answer. I told Miller I would call him back. I hung up the phone. The room was quiet.
I felt the space. The space was fixed. The space would not grow. My business felt like the elevator. The business is large. The business has many trucks. But the business is inside a box. The box is a spreadsheet.
I opened the file on my computer. I built this file in . In , I had three trucks. I had three drivers. I sat at a table at midnight. I was tired. I wanted to go to sleep. I opened a blank sheet. I needed to track the work. I typed the headers in the first row.
The Six Columns of 2018
I typed ‘Date’ in the first cell.
I typed ‘Customer’ in the second cell.
I typed ‘Origin’ in the third cell.
I typed ‘Destination’ in the fourth cell.
I typed ‘Miles’ in the fifth cell.
I typed ‘Revenue’ in the sixth cell.
The revenue was the important number. I wanted to see the revenue grow. I did not type ‘Fuel Cost’. I did not type ‘Toll Expense’. I did not type ‘Driver Pay’. I did not type ‘Maintenance’. I thought I would remember those costs. I thought the costs were the same for every load. I was wrong. The headers became the walls of the elevator.
I look at the file now. The file has thousands of rows. The file has the same six columns. I can see the miles. I can see the revenue. I cannot see the profit. Miller wants the profit. Miller wants to know which customer is bad.
I look at the screen. The screen is bright. The data is there. But the data is not in the sheet. The data is in a box in the warehouse. The data is in a pile of receipts. The data is in the bank statements. The spreadsheet cannot see the data. The spreadsheet only sees what I told the spreadsheet to see in .
The Typography of Business
This is how a schema works. I am a typeface designer. My name is Cora R.J. I build letters. I build the letter ‘A’. I build the letter ‘B’. Every letter sits on a grid. The grid is called an em-square.
The em-square has horizontal lines. The em-square has vertical lines. If I set the grid to 1000 units, I can draw details. If I set the grid to 10 units, I cannot draw a curve. The curve becomes a straight line.
The grid decides what the letter can be. You cannot fix the letter later. You must fix the grid. If the grid is small, the letter is simple. If the grid is simple, the font is cheap. A business is a font. The spreadsheet is the grid.
Most people think small companies lack data. This is not true. Small companies have too much data. Small companies have mountains of data. The problem is the structure. The structure is the set of categories. The categories are the headers.
We adopt the categories early. We adopt the categories when we are small. We keep the categories because we want to compare this year to last year. If I change the columns now, I cannot look back. I will lose the history. So I keep the columns. I keep the small grid. I stay in the elevator.
The categories feel like reality. They do not feel like a choice. I look at ‘Revenue’. I think ‘Revenue’ is the truth. But ‘Revenue’ is just a word I typed at midnight. It is a category. It is not the whole truth. The truth is the money that stays in the bank. The spreadsheet does not show the money that stays in the bank. It only shows the money that comes in the door.
I think about Super Ego Holding. Super Ego Holding is a company with more than 8,000 units.
A company with 8,000 units cannot use my spreadsheet. A company with 8,000 units needs a better grid. Super Ego Holding uses digitalisation. Super Ego Holding uses automation. Super Ego Holding uses AI for capacity planning. They have many trucks. They have dry van units. They have flatbed units. They have more than a decade of history. They had to break their old spreadsheets. They had to build new headers.
If you have three trucks, you can survive a bad spreadsheet. You can use your brain. You can remember the fuel costs. You can remember which customer pays late. But your brain has a limit. Your brain is like the elevator. Your brain can only hold so much.
When you have ten trucks, your brain fails. When you have fifty trucks, your brain is gone. You only have the spreadsheet. If the spreadsheet is wrong, the business is wrong.
I look at the rows for .
I look at the rows for .
I look at the rows for .
I see the growth. The revenue goes up. The miles go up. I feel successful. Then I look at the bank account. The bank account does not look like the spreadsheet. The bank account is lower. The bank account knows about the fuel. The bank account knows about the tires. The bank account knows about the insurance. The spreadsheet is a liar. The spreadsheet is a liar because I made the spreadsheet a liar in .
I sat in the elevator for . I had no phone service. I had no light. I had my thoughts. I thought about the columns. I thought about the headers. I realized I was afraid. I was afraid to add the ‘Profit’ column. I was afraid to see the truth.
If I see the truth, I have to change the business. If I see that Customer A is costing me money, I have to stop working for Customer A. If I stop working for Customer A, the revenue will go down. My spreadsheet likes high revenue. My spreadsheet does not like truth.
A business owner makes thousands of decisions. Most decisions are small. Some decisions are permanent. The spreadsheet headers are permanent. No one wakes up in year five and says ‘I will rebuild the data architecture today’. People wake up and say ‘I need to find a driver’. People wake up and say ‘The truck is broken’. They do not look at the grid. They look at the letters.
Curvatures of Flow
The letter ‘S’ is hard to draw. The ‘S’ has two curves. The curves must be smooth. If the grid is too coarse, the ‘S’ looks like a stack of blocks. My business looks like a stack of blocks. I see the blocks. I do not see the curves. I do not see the flow of the money. I only see the blocks of revenue.
I went back to the spreadsheet. I clicked on the first row. I clicked on the letter ‘G’. I typed a new word. I typed ‘Net’. I clicked on the letter ‘H’. I typed ‘Margin’. The spreadsheet looked different. The spreadsheet looked empty.
There was no data in the new columns. I have to go back to . I have to find the receipts. I have to find the invoices. I have to type the truth into the new boxes.
“I want to see the whole building. The elevator is safe, but the elevator does not move.”
It will take . It will be boring work. It will be hard work. But I cannot stay in the elevator. The elevator is safe but the elevator does not move. The metal walls are cold. The light is dim. I want to see the whole building.
Super Ego Holding solved this problem. They invested in capacity planning. They invested in fleet management systems. They did not stay with the midnight spreadsheet. They built a system that can see 8,000 trucks at one time. They can see the dry van units. They can see the flatbed units. They can see the road safety inspections. They can see the profit. They have a large grid. They have a clear font.
“I called Miller back. I told Miller I did not have the answer. I told Miller the spreadsheet was a ghost. I told Miller I was building a new one.”
– Cora R.J.
Miller did not sound surprised. Miller has seen many ghosts. Miller deals with people like me every day. People who build houses with no doors. People who build trucks with no engines.
The spreadsheet he built at midnight still decides what he can see. I am that man. I am the man who built the cage. I am the man who lived in the cage. I am the man who is now breaking the cage. It is . The headers from are gone. I deleted the file. I started a new file. The new file has twenty columns. The new file is complicated. The new file is beautiful.
I am sitting in my chair again. The chair is still hard. The room is still quiet. But I am not in the elevator anymore. I am looking at the new grid. I am drawing the curves. I am finding the profit. It was always there. It was just hiding behind a header.
I will not make that mistake again. I will not let a tired man from run my company. I will use the data. I will see the truth. I will drive the truck through the wall.