The Consultant’s Chart Revisited

A year ago I wrote a post about the circumplex chart and how consulting firms use charts to increase their price tag. Not all charts, mind: only the ones that the average user don’t recognize from the Excel charts library.

Funny enough, I got several messages from consultants asking how that chart was done. So, in the spirit of the silly season, and just before I leave on vacation to a place no data visualization expert will ever find me, I’ll tell you how. Watch the video tutorial:

(By the way, I invite you to subscribe to my YouTube channel. I’ll start adding videos there on a regular basis.).

As you can see, this is a basic doughnut chart… You know, doughnut charts don’t deserve their bad reputation. They are very flexible, and you can use them as pie-charts-on-steroids or as a basic framework for the circumplex chart and other similar charts (you can also make a speedometer, but please don’t). Of course, pies and doughnuts are not real food, so you should not expect much from their namesake charts, either.

Here is the spreadsheet (xlsx).

Please share your comments below.

8 thoughts on “The Consultant’s Chart Revisited”

  1. Awesome, I’m gonna go and incorporate this chart into the dashboard i’m working on. I’m sure management will love it.

  2. well I never used charts in my excel spread sheet, but I think its a useful thing, as you have mentioned it in this article of yours. I will hopefully incorporate it in my next assignment.

  3. Jorge – thanks for your reply to my comment on peltier’s site… it is exactly the kind of thing I’m looking for! I hope I can get it to work in Excel 2003!

    Thanks so much!!
    Pratish

  4. Managed to get it working perfectly in Excel 2003… thanks again! My next challenge is to get a very simple input sheet on a web page that would allow for this chart to be created and displayed dynamically for the user entering the data – not sure if that would be within the scope of excelcharts.com but would really appreciate any suggestions you might have as to how I can do this?

    Thanks!

  5. It’s kind of sad

    a) that people would think this way, rather than just giving good advice,

    b) that the clients would buy into the pizzazz.

    I’m not sure why management consulting firms even get business in the first place. My pet theory is that someone in the upper echelons wants to prove their point so they spend $200k of the corporation’s money hiring someone who will agree with them to say they’re right.

  6. This was fantastic. You did a very nice job walking though how to set up a circumplex graph. thank you I will give it a try!

  7. Genial!! Estoy asesorando una tesis donde se necesitan gráficos circunflexos. Ahora debo practicar para conseguir sectores que representen el 1% en cada categoría. Muchas Gracias!!

Comments are closed.