Finding the obvious may lead to jobs…

What opportunities are you missing by taking things for granted?

I am not an expert in Microsoft Excel but I can use it competently and am aware of its capabilities even when I don’t use some features.

This simple graph was produced from a table of data in excel for one of my clients. For me, it was an obvious way to produce a graph; for my client, it was a major challenge to know how to produce it at all.

And it hadn’t occurred to me that someone who uses Excel for various tasks wouldn’t know that you can easily create graphs from the data entered into Excel. It’s just obvious to me so I took it for granted that it was obvious to others.

Yet, that isn’t the case.

Graphs in Excel – not so obvious to everyone

A couple of weeks ago I did a presentation which included a simple graph on one slide. Afterwards, I was talking with a client and he mentioned wanting some graphs for a report he was working on.

 Long story short, he didn’t know excel would do that for him.

I set up that simple graph for him and now am managing a larger excel-based project for him. I say managing because it is a more complex graph so I have outsourced it to someone I know who is an Excel expert!

Missed opportunities

It has me thinking though. How many more graphs could my client have used, in reports or presentations or for his own use, if I had told him about excel graphs sooner?

How many clients could I have referred to my excel expert?

When we know something, it’s hard to remember that many others don’t know it or at least know it as well as well as we do.

Are there some obvious tasks or skills you aren’t seeing for your business?

I wonder what great opportunities you could find by spotting those obvious tasks and skills…