Practice — Hot · The Chart Review
Skills focus. Reviewing a page the way the chief of staff does — finding what
is wrong, saying how, and clearing what is right. A reviewer who flags
everything teaches people to ignore the review.
Ungraded, open-ended. Write the actual memo; the writing is the exercise.
Scenario
Five visuals land on your desk for review before the board pack ships, described exactly as built:
| # | The visual | Builder's note |
|---|---|---|
| A | Regional revenue bars, 2025, axis starting at $1.5M | "floored the axis to show the detail" |
| B | Stacked column: monthly revenue by category, titled "Lighting's momentum continues" | — |
| C | Line chart of monthly revenue, 2023–2026, markers off, titled "Revenue climbs steadily with summer peaks" | — |
| D | Five KPI cards, one per category, each colored red-to-green by revenue rank | "traffic-lighting for quick reads" |
| E | A donut of the five categories' share, labels on, titled "Share of revenue" | "the CEO likes donuts" |
Your review
- Verdict each visual — ship, fix, or rebuild — with the specific mechanism of any deception, not just its name. (What does A's floor do to the Southwest bar, quantitatively? What claim does B's title make that its species cannot support?)
- One of the five is genuinely shippable. Find it, and say so plainly — clearing good work is as much the reviewer's job as catching bad work.
- Rank the remaining four by damage — which would mislead the board most — and defend the ranking in a sentence each.
- Write the memo: professional, specific, under 200 words, addressed to colleagues who will read your reviews again next quarter.
Reflection
- Which visual took you longest to verdict, and why?
- The course's checkers are built "high-precision — one that cries wolf every run teaches you to ignore it." How does that engineering principle map onto chart review?