Making the Most of Microsoft Office: Nick Millican’s Productivity Tips for Excel and Outlook Users

Productivity tools are only as powerful as the people using them. And if you spend any time inside the world of commercial real estate—particularly at the level of someone like Nick Millican, CEO of Greycoat Real Estate—you’ll quickly learn that Microsoft Office isn’t just a suite of software. It’s the infrastructure of modern decision-making.

Millican, who oversees one of central London’s most strategically focused property firms, doesn’t reach for the flashiest tools on the market. He reaches for what works. And in his hands, Excel and Outlook become more than administrative utilities—they become engines of clarity.

Let’s start with Excel. In real estate, every decision lives and dies by the numbers: yield forecasts, cap rates, development timelines, scenario analysis. But Millican doesn’t just use Excel for static models. He uses it as a dynamic thinking tool—one that helps surface underlying risks and sharpen strategic assumptions.

His team builds models that don’t just show outcomes—they test tension points. What happens if interest rates shift mid-cycle? How do leasing assumptions flex under different tenant mixes? With Excel’s “What-If” Analysis, Data Tables, and Goal Seek functions, Millican ensures the team isn’t just running numbers, but running questions. In this way, spreadsheets don’t just record logic—they refine it.

On the communications side, Outlook becomes equally vital. For someone managing investors, partners, consultants, and internal stakeholders, inbox overload is a constant threat. But Millican treats email not as a stream to be survived, but as a space to be architected. As noted in this Green Prophet profile, his approach reflects a larger theme of intentional infrastructure—from software to sustainability.

Rules and folders do the heavy lifting. Investment updates, legal docs, and project timelines land where they should, not where they fall. Flagging systems, paired with customized categories, allow his team to triage not just by urgency but by strategic weight—what’s informational, what’s actionable, what needs a response today.

One of his go-to tactics? Blocking time in Outlook for thinking. It’s a small shift that reclaims margin in a calendar that could easily be swallowed by meetings. Those windows become essential—not just for reviewing materials, but for interrogating decisions before they’re made. That kind of margin is also what allows deep strategic thinking to guide project-level decisions.

Together, Excel and Outlook serve as more than tools—they’re extensions of Nick Millican’s operating rhythm: precise, intentional, and quietly high-leverage. The takeaway isn’t that everyone should be a power user. It’s that the most effective leaders don’t wait for the perfect software to improve their workflow. They master the tools already at their fingertips—and adapt them to fit the shape of their thought.

For Nick Millican, productivity isn’t about adding complexity. It’s about removing friction—from numbers, from communications, from the daily noise of running a high-performing business. That belief in optimized systems underpins the strategic philosophy of Nick Millican and Greycoat’s broader operations. And in his world, Microsoft Office isn’t basic. It’s foundational.

Read more:

https://www.greycoat.com/team/nick-millican/

Productivity tools are only as powerful as the people using them. And if you spend any time inside the world of commercial real estate—particularly at the level of someone like Nick Millican, CEO of Greycoat Real Estate—you’ll quickly learn that Microsoft Office isn’t just a suite of software. It’s the infrastructure of modern decision-making. Millican,…