The spreadsheet doesn't have feelings

The spreadsheet was open on the table. The columns did what columns do - added the numbers, showed the totals, told a story that fit on one screen. The story was that the project was losing money.

The operations director said the numbers don't capture what the project did for the team.

The answer was ready. It always is when someone says the numbers miss the point. The spreadsheet is the only thing in the room without an agenda. It adds the column. It doesn't care whose idea it was or how many late nights went into it.

The argument wasn't with the math. The math measured the wrong thing. The project had changed how the team worked - new partnerships, a different cadence in how departments talked to each other. Revenue was flat but the operation underneath it had shifted, and the shift was what the team had been building toward.

The temptation was to say that unmeasured value is how people justify bad investments. It's a line that gets used often. It's usually true.

But this wasn't justification. This was someone pointing at something not visible from the other side of the table. The spreadsheet showed a project that didn't pencil. It also showed - to someone who knew where to look - people working differently than they had the year before. The cells couldn't hold that.

The spreadsheet is still the right place to start a hard conversation about money. It tells the truth about the things it was asked to count. The operations director knew more about the silence between the columns than anyone else in the room.