The system went live eighteen months ago. The spreadsheet is still the version people trust.

Shadow spreadsheets are rarely indiscipline. They are a precise map of what the implementation failed to capture, and reading that map beats banning the file.

By Steve 5 min read
Abstract bridge artwork for The system went live eighteen months ago. The spreadsheet is still the version people trust.

A business spends six figures and nine months replacing its patchwork of tools with a single platform. Go-live passes. Training happens. And somewhere in a shared drive, a spreadsheet with a name like Master Tracker v4 keeps being opened every morning, because that is where the numbers people actually act on live. The usual reading is cultural: people resist change, discipline slipped, the training didn’t land. That reading is comfortable, and it is almost always wrong. A shadow spreadsheet that survives eighteen months of official disapproval is not a habit.…

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