Excel for CEOs (What No One Tells You!)
Excel is used by everyone in an organization—from analysts crunching numbers to executives making big decisions. But if you’re a CEO, you don’t need to know every formula or spend hours building reports. Instead, you need to focus on the right Excel skills to get the insights you need, fast.
In this blog, I’ll walk you through the essential Excel skills every CEO should master—not just the technical ones, but also the mindset and approach that will make your life easier.
1. How to Ask for the Right Reports
One of the biggest struggles CEOs face is getting the reports they actually need. The problem? Most requests are vague, leading to back-and-forth revisions. The fastest way to fix this is by creating a simple blueprint before asking your team to pull data.
This blueprint includes four key things:
✅ List down the key calculations (KPIs) – Instead of just asking for a “sales report,” define what metrics matter. Do you need total sales, profit margins, refunds, or customer acquisition costs? Write them down first.
✅ Define the logic – How should each KPI be calculated? For example, if you want total sales, should it be based on the retail price or the discounted selling price? Should refunds be subtracted? Writing this out ensures there’s no confusion.
✅ Decide how you want to filter the data – Do you want to see sales by region, product category, or customer segment? Listing these helps your team structure the report correctly.
✅ Sketch a rough report format – Before jumping to fancy dashboards, a simple table layout is enough. Just draw what you want to see—rows, columns, filters—so your team knows exactly how to structure it.
Once you get this right, you’ll save hours of unnecessary rework.
2. How to Read, Understand & Audit Reports
Once your team delivers a report, your next job is understanding and verifying the data. Many CEOs rely blindly on the numbers they get, but knowing how to audit data quickly is a game-changer.
Here are some Excel skills that help:
F9 for Formula Evaluation – If you’re checking a complex formula, select a part of it and press F9 to see what it evaluates to. Just don’t press Enter, or you’ll overwrite it!
F5 (Go To) for Tracing Data Sources – If a report references multiple sheets, use F5 → Go To to quickly jump to those sources.
Trace Dependents & Precedents – Want to see which cells feed into a calculation? Use ALT + T, U, D to trace dependents or ALT + T, U, T to trace precedents. This helps you spot errors fast.
Evaluate Formula Tool – If a formula looks complicated, use Formula → Evaluate Formula to step through it and see how Excel calculates the result.
These shortcuts help you double-check calculations fast instead of taking numbers at face value.
3. How to Perform Ad-Hoc Analysis
No matter how well a report is prepared, you’ll always have follow-up questions. Maybe you spot a drop in revenue and want to analyze sales by product category or compare regions. Instead of waiting for your team to make changes, knowing a few Pivot Table tricks can help you explore data yourself.
Here’s what every CEO should know in Pivot Tables:
Summarize Data Quickly – Drop your yearly sales in rows and values in the Pivot Table to see trends instantly.
Show Contributions – Want to see how much each region contributed to total sales? Right-click on a field, select “Show Values As” → “Percentage of Parent Total.”
Use Slicers for Quick Filtering – Instead of messing with filters, add a slicer for easy selection of customers, products, or regions.
Pivot Charts for Instant Visualization – Need a quick chart? Use ALT + F1 to generate one from your Pivot Table in seconds.
These simple tricks let you dive into data without writing a single formula.
4. How to Use AI (ChatGPT) for Excel Problems
Even if you know how to analyze data, some problems will leave you stuck. Maybe you need to allocate expenses across transactions or create a custom formula you don’t know. This is where AI tools like ChatGPT can save the day.
Here’s how to use ChatGPT effectively for Excel:
Break your problem into small parts – Instead of asking, “How do I allocate expenses in Excel?”, break it down:
- “How do I calculate total yearly sales?”
- “How do I divide a value based on a percentage allocation?”
Ask ChatGPT for formulas – You can describe your problem like this:
“I have a sales table with columns: Date, Sales Rep, Customer, Sales Amount. How do I calculate total sales by year using an Excel formula?”
Validate the results – Copy the suggested formula, test it, and if something seems off, ask ChatGPT to refine it.
Knowing how to use AI efficiently can speed up problem-solving, especially for complex Excel calculations.
5. The Most Overlooked Skill: Teaching Your Team
Once you’ve analyzed the data and made decisions, there’s one final step—teaching your team why you did what you did.
Let’s say you found that sales dropped in a region and decided to check store employee attendance to see if fewer staff impacted sales. If you don’t explain your thought process, your team might not even think about tracking attendance next time.
Teaching your team how you think about business metrics helps them bring you better reports in the future, making everyone’s job easier.
Final Thoughts
Being a CEO isn’t about knowing every Excel function—it’s about using Excel strategically to get the right insights and make better decisions. If you master these skills—asking for the right reports, auditing data, performing ad-hoc analysis, using AI, and teaching your team—you’ll save time, reduce errors, and get the answers you need faster.
