Page 55 - HBR's 10 Must Reads 20180 - The Definitive Management Ideas of the Year from Harvard Business Review

BERINATO
Idea in Brief

Context easy to create terrible charts.
Visualization can be so much
Knowledge workers need greater more: It’s an agile, powerful way
visual literacy than they used to, to explore ideas and communicate
because so much data—and so information.
many ideas—are now presented
graphically. But few of us have . . . But strategy is key
been taught data-visualization
skills. Don’t jump straight to execution.
Instead, first think about what
Tools are fine . . .
you’re representing—ideas or data?
Inexpensive tools allow anyone Then consider your purpose: Do
to perform simple tasks such as you want to inform, persuade, or
importing spreadsheet data into explore? The answers will suggest
a bar chart. But that means it’s what tools and resources you need.

If you know the answers to these questions, you can plan what
resources and tools you’ll need and begin to discern what type of
visualization will help you achieve your goals most effectively.

Conceptual Data-driven
Focus Ideas Statistics
Goals Simplify, teach Inform, enlighten
“Here’s how our organi- “Here are our revenues
zation is structured.” for the past two years.”

The first question is the simpler of the two, and the answer is
usually obvious. Either you’re visualizing qualitative information or
you’re plotting quantitative information: ideas or statistics. But no-
tice that the question is about the information itself, not the forms
you might ultimately use to show it. For example, the classic Gart-
ner Hype Cycle (see following page) uses a traditionally data-driven
form—a line chart—but no actual data. It’s a concept.

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