Help with time consuming processes

[Hereforthekickz]

Hi
How would you approach this please…

I work in a small team and our main job is the administration of review meetings. It is a complicated process of setting up the meetings, chasing for completed paperwork, distribution of paperwork etc.

My colleague has always taken on the responsibility of creating a spreadsheet to monitor this process. The issue is that she doesn’t know how to setup a spreadsheet properly so it’s half spreadsheet and half word table. It lacks any spreadsheet functionality so for example, you can’t filter data because she has lots of blank lines in it and it contains so much irrelevant info. The spreadsheet is massive and you can’t quickly see who hasn’t done their paperwork at the end of the year without manually sifting through it. It shows how many meeting slots we have left but the figure is input manually as she doesn’t know how to use the sum function.

I have asked every year if this could be looked into. I have tried to sell why it would be beneficial and appealed to her saying how much extra work it would save the team. I have offered to help but she will not take anything on board. She just makes excuses and gives reasons why it won’t work but they are based on her lack of knowledge.

I am dreading using this spreadsheet again this year.

Should I just go ahead and create my own for my personal use (we work together but deal with our own clients)?

Should I speak to my boss (he tends to leave it to us to get on with)?

Should I just change the spreadsheet for everyone?

thanks

Ugh. Bad spreadsheets are the bain of my life, so I sympathise!

I think doing your own and then doing a demo for her might help? Or a demo for the whole team?

How about proposing a process review to the boss?

It's madness to keep using an inefficient process when it is easily improved.

Weirdly a friend of mine had literally the exact same problem!! The awful cumbersome excel file took hours or even days to update. My friend created her own spreadsheet which management were amazed with (even though it was just created using common sense and minor Excel knowledge). Get ready for your colleague to become VERY defensive if you do this. But yes, definitely do what Franklet says.

Honestly i wouldn't even ask permission. Just do it and share it!

I get why you're frustrated, I went through a similar thing myself. Now, I'm not sure what you did in the meantime, but I do agree with others that you need a new spreadsheet (but expect some drama at first).

There's nothing worse than relying on something to give you a better overview or automate something, and than have to do everything manually. That's why I started from scratch.

The only "problem" was I personally can't handle spreadsheets with grace, so I opted for this Google sheets AI extension. Did it save me time (like you want to)? Yes. It will even work better for you as you have more experience with spreadsheets.

Crack on and create a new spreadsheet for everyone, tell them this is the new one. It's good initiative taking and proactive improvement. Also it sounds like this colleague needs a bit of steering and taking in hand!