Not long ago, the ability to create smart data visualizations (or
dataviz) was a nice-to-have skill for design- and data-minded managers.
But now it’s a must-have skill for all managers, because it’s often the
only way to make sense of the work they do. Decision making increasingly
relies on data, which arrives with such overwhelming velocity, and in
such volume, that some level of abstraction is crucial. Thanks to the
internet and a growing number of affordable tools, visualization is
accessible for everyone—but that convenience can lead to charts that are
merely adequate or even ineffective. By answering just two questions,
Berinato writes, you can set yourself up to succeed: Is the information
conceptual or data-driven? and Am I declaring something or exploring
something? He leads readers through a simple process of identifying
which of the four types of visualization they might use to achieve their
goals most effectively: idea illustration, idea generation, visual
discovery, or everyday dataviz. This article is adapted from the
author’s just-published book, Good Charts: The HBR Guide to Making
Smarter, More Persuasive Data Visualizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]