I was watching a music documentary on television recently, and one of the comments made really, um, struck a chord with me.

The interviewee in one particular segment was talking about how the introduction of music video in the 1980’s changed the industry, and how the careers of talented musicians such as Supertramp arguably ended almost immediately. Wikipedia seems to say otherwise, but as is often said, you can’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.

His point was that the viewing audience wanted to watch more attractive people, and the broadcasters wanted to attract more viewers, so they gave them what they wanted.

Crisis? What Crisis?

Similarly, there is good information that continues to be communicated improperly to its audience just because of its graphical appearance. Confusing charts obfuscate the valuable information that is the foundation for good decision making. Worse, the mere presentation of a chart can be designed to intentionally mislead the reader.

One of the unwritten rules with Excel charts (at least within the Excel documentation) is that you should not accept the defaults Excel generates. It is possible to create very good charts with Excel with just a little extra time and effort.

Don’t Forget Your Books

In terms of the many resources you can employ to help you learning better communication through better charting, you’ll school yourself best by following along with Jon Peltier’s blog, and Stephen Few’s books. Jon has been writing about Excel’s charting abilities for some time now, but has only recently been sharing his content in the form of a blog.

Stephen Few’s book Show Me the Numbers really is fantastic. It focuses on concepts and is not a step-by-step book for using Excel or any other specific software. But with a little knowledge on the mechanics and details of Excel’s charts, which you can learn on both Jon’s site and Charley Kyd’s ExcelUser site, you’ll be well on your way towards regularly producing effective graphical communication.

Logical, Responsible, Practical

In an age where there so many celebrities seem to be celebrities for no real reason for being other than society elevates them because of their appearance, it’s only logical that how your work looks matters.

It’s really just basic human nature. We’re all drawn to the attractive. Be practical and let your work take advantage of this.

Don’t Hide in Your Shell

You can apply this approach to not just your charts, but to all of your reporting by making an effort to make your reports unique. Let yourself be a bit of a dreamer, and come up with something new. Shake up the status quo a little. Help your work stand out from the crowd. It’ll get noticed, and so will you. Your work is worthy of the positive attention it gets, isn’t it?

Monarch allows you to capture an enormous amount of data. The big challenge for you is in turning mountains of data into real information by telling its hidden story in a manner that’s clear and easily digestible by your audience. Excel, in addition to obviously being well known as an analysis tool, is fantastic for publishing charts and tables, and together they’ll let you tell the story.

What will you do today to demonstrate that you excel with Monarch?