Label your charts!

Charts you share with others need a bodyguard of text to be self-explanatory,  avert misunderstandings, and support learning. None of this matters when you chart exclusively for your own use, but it is obligatory when communicating with a team or making a case to management.

Generating an informative, actionable chart can take hours; documenting and labeling it should take minutes, yet we encounter charts with missing or unclear labels in business documents, published articles, and even textbooks.