Stop Guessing and Start Succeeding: Why Polar Charts are a Game Changer

Polar charts changed how we collaborate

Recently, we’ve been utilizing polar charts to make tough decisions and open up honest conversations about our projects.

Why?

• They reveal team members’ genuine thoughts on a project
• They give insight into issues that leadership may not have considered
• They are super quick and simple to fill out

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Will this project be a success?

I wanted know if polar charts could help us better predict when a project will be a success before we agree to work on it. So, we ran an experiment. 

Quick aside: Polar charts go by many names: spider charts, radar charts, web charts, or star plots, but they all consist of points plotted on different radii of a circle.

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The MVP

Our team took the MVP approach to see if polar charts could help. Predicting the success of a project is complex, but to start we chose a few key factors to rate projects on. We placed a factor on each corner of the chart and asked the team to fill it out.

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The value is not in the shape but the discussion

After filling out each of our charts, we had a very impactful discussion. We asked each other questions like, “Why was your relationship score so low?” or “Why do you think this project has such a high lead potential?”.

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We found the impact/effort ratio of this exercise was high. The impact of using these polar charts greatly outweighs the effort needed to complete them.

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Other uses for polar charts?

This conclusion sent us running to explore other possibilities, “How else might polar charts be used?”

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We’ve experimented with using polar charts in other contexts 👇

• Goal evaluation: “Do I have a good 3-month goal?"
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• User testing review: "How would you [user] rate the application you just tested?"
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• Discovery call evaluation: “Should we pursue working this lead?”
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Try using polar charts

DIY - Take 5 minutes to print out our polar chart and have your team give you quick honest feedback on its success probability.

Get some help - Looking for innovative ways to help your team break out of its rut? Ask us anything or check out our innovation workshop.

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