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Welcome back to The 2x2 — the ultimate newsletter for executive consultants!
A lot can go wrong when creating charts — and we’ve seen some really bad ones on the internet and in real life.
That’s why Amelia Waters stopped by to share some chart rules she learned in BCG.
Read on…
⏰ Today in 5 minutes or less:
Charts are made to help someone understand an insight or make a decision fast.
The simpler your chart is, the better it will look and easier to understand — the best charts don’t look overcomplicated or overdesigned.
Your charts should have a headline with a clear takeaway.
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Chart Crimes... and the Five BCG Rules to Fix Them
You’ve seen it before.
The chart goes up. People squint. Silence for five seconds.
And then someone says, “Can you walk us through this?” with squinty eyes and so much confusion in their voice.
Now, you’re burning five minutes explaining something that should only take five seconds to understand.
That’s when you’ve committed a chart crime.
Last week in The 2x2 Podcast, chart champ Amelia Waters and I looked at a few chart crimes — and discussed what’s so atrocious about them.
Watch the full episode here:
But here’s your practical guide, so you’ll never commit it (again).
What a Chart Crime Looks Like
Before we get into what works, it’s worth calling out what doesn’t.
Most bad slides fall into four predictable buckets:
Logical Nonsense. Inconsistent labels, mismatched visual proportions, and numbers that don’t add up. If something is off, you’ve lost the room. No one will trust anything that follows.
Cognitive Overload. This is when you try to say everything on one page. Too many words, figures, or colors involved.
Trying Too Hard. Overdesigned visuals, when a simple bar graph or table would do the trick better.
No Leads for the Reader. No callouts, no titles, no signals on the page. Someone should be able to guess what comes next if they see your titles scattered on the floor.
If you avoid those four, the chart police won’t come knocking at your door.
But it’s not a reason to celebrate yet – you’ve just made a chart that isn’t bad.
At a big firm, a bad chart gets caught in a case team meeting. When you're solo, the deck you built is that one that goes out.
They get forwarded, screenshotted, and pulled up in front of a whole team.
And you look like a dummy.
Sloppy charts will signal sloppy thinking, which becomes a problem when you’re selling expertise.
A good chart will follow a few rules.
How to Avoid Committing a Chart Crime
Before you open PowerPoint or Excel to build a chart, answer this:
What kind of decision needs to be made?
Charts aren’t just to show your findings – they’re meant to help someone understand an insight or make a decision faster.
As Amelia Waters put it on the show: “The goal is to figure out the ‘so what’ at the end. How does this change my betting strategy? How does this change how I think about my quarterbacks, my coaches? It needs to inform a thing.”
Build it backwards.
Think carefully about what you want them to do differently after showing them the chart. From there, you can start building it with the data you have.
If you skip this step, everything down the line gets harder.
Now, onto the rules.
Rule #1: The headline does the heavy lifting. A chart without a clear takeaway in the title is just a visual. Write the "so what" at the top. It’s not just "Revenue by Quarter" but "Q3 Revenue Rebounded Faster Than Expected." If you can't write that headline, the chart isn't ready.
Amelia’s rule of thumb: if you printed out your deck, dropped it, and someone else had to sort it – “based on titles alone, not even the content, they should be able to put it back in the right order.” That’s how strong your titles need to be.
Rule #2: Your numbers need to be consistent. This sounds obvious until your pie chart slices add up to 248%. And when sharp clients catch this, every other number in your entire report looks suspicious. Always gut-check totals, percentages, and axis values.
Rule #3: Color should mean something. If colors are chosen only because they look nice, they’ll add noise and distract from the elements that matter. Also check your palette for accessibility: similar tones in the same color family are invisible to some readers.
Amelia said it well: “Colors should help tell a story.”
Rule #4: Your axis should tell the truth. Truncating an axis to exaggerate differences, or starting a scale at an arbitrary number, distorts what the data shows. The impression it creates eventually catches up with you.
Rule #5: White space is not wasted space. From an artistic perspective, white space is important to lessen visual fatigue. For building charts, white space prevents cognitive overload and improves clarity. Always think of white space as an element you need to add to charts — not something you simply leave empty.
As Amelia reminded us: “White space is a weapon. It’s actually a key part of the creation.”
The Operating Principle
If you remember nothing else, remember this: A great slide makes the conclusion obvious.
No explanation required. No walkthrough needed.
No extra narration to “land the point.”
Because the best slides do two things: show information and do the thinking for the room.
They’re meant to help move decisions forward.
The ones showing up in LLMs convert 3× better than Google
They optimized for LLMs, not just Google.
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