Up to now, most of our charts have answered questions about one dimension at a time: change over time, comparison across categories, distribution, or relationships between two variables. Structural and portfolio charts are different. They answer questions like:
- “What does the whole landscape look like?”
- “How big are these spaces and how are they structured?”
- “Where is our portfolio overweight or underweight?”
These charts are often used on “big picture” pages: market scans, portfolio overviews, strategic options. They tend to be visually richer and more complex, which makes discipline even more important. The goal is not to impress with complexity; it is to show structure cleanly.
11.1 Mekko (Marimekko) charts: size and mix in one view
A Mekko (or Marimekko) chart is one of the most powerful structural charts in consulting. It lets you show size and mix simultaneously across categories.
Conceptually:
- The horizontal axis is divided into columns of varying width. Each column’s width represents the size of something (e.g., total market size by country, total revenue by business unit).
- Within each column, stacked segments represent the composition or mix (e.g., competitor share, product mix, channel split).
- The height of each stack is usually normalized to 100%, so each column is a 100% stacked bar, but the width varies with size.
This lets you answer questions like:
- “Which markets are largest, and who is strongest in each?”
- “Where is our portfolio concentrated, and in which segments within those spaces?”
- “Which countries are both big and dominated by one competitor?”
Good Mekko use cases:
- Market structure: countries on the x-axis, width = market size, segments = players’ market share.
- Portfolio overview: business units on the x-axis, width = revenue, segments = profit pools or product lines.
- Customer mix: segments on the x-axis, width = number of customers or revenue, segments = product adoption tiers.
Design guidance:
- Limit the number of columns to a manageable set (often 5–10). If you have 25 countries, show the top 8–10 and aggregate the rest into “Other.”
- Limit the number of segments within each column to 3–5. Too many slices make the chart unreadable.
- Use consistent colors for segments across all columns (e.g., same competitor color across all markets).
- Label columns with both name and size where possible (“France – $2.3B”).
- Use call-outs sparingly to highlight specific regions of interest (“Large markets where we are sub-scale,” “Small but high-margin niches”).
A Mekko is inherently heavier than a bar chart. It should be reserved for genuine “market map” or “portfolio structure” moments—slides you expect the client to come back to multiple times during the discussion.
11.2 Percentage breakdown and “tile” charts
Sometimes you want to show composition structurally, but a full Mekko is overkill. Percentage breakdown and “tile” charts offer lighter-weight ways to show structure and concentration.
Two common variants:
- Simple tile breakdowns
- The whole area (often a rectangle) represents 100%.
- It is divided into tiles or blocks whose area is proportional to share.
- Useful when you want to emphasize concentration: a few big blocks dominate, many small ones trail.
- Example: revenue by product family where three products drive 75% and the rest are noise.
- Equal-unit tile grids
- The chart is a grid of equal-sized squares (e.g., 10×10 = 100 squares).
- The number of colored tiles corresponds to share or count (e.g., 37 squares filled = 37%).
- This is more about counting units than precise proportional area. It can be intuitive for audiences less comfortable with more technical visuals.
- Example: 100 tiles where each tile is 1% of customers, with different colors for segments or outcomes.
Guidelines for percentage/tile charts:
- Make the mapping explicit (“Each tile = 1% of revenue” or “Block area proportional to sales”).
- Group small items into “Other” where needed. Tiny unlabeled fragments defeat the purpose.
- Use them on summary pages, not for detailed analytical work. They are about “feel for the whole,” not inspection of individual values.
If the main question is “How concentrated is this?” or “What does the whole portfolio feel like?”, a clear tile layout can be very effective.
11.3 Heat maps (color-coded matrices)
Heat maps use color intensity to encode values in a matrix. They are ideal when you have two categorical dimensions and a value for each pair, and you want the reader to see patterns, clusters, and anomalies rather than memorize exact numbers.
Structure:
- Rows = one categorical dimension (e.g., products, capabilities, customer segments).
- Columns = another dimension (e.g., regions, channels, time buckets, metrics).
- Each cell’s color (shade or hue) represents the value: higher, lower, good, bad.
Typical uses:
- Performance by product × region (e.g., profitability, growth, penetration).
- Correlation matrices across variables (strong positive, neutral, negative).
- Capability vs business unit maturity matrices.
- Operational metrics by site × metric (e.g., safety, quality, delivery).
Design principles:
- Choose a meaningful color scale:
- For “bad to good,” use a single hue with light-to-dark or a diverging scale (e.g., light–neutral–dark).
- For “negative to positive,” a two-sided scale (e.g., light for neutral, one color for negative, another for positive) can work.
- Provide a clear legend for the color scale, ideally labeled with both numbers and qualitative descriptors (“Low,” “Medium,” “High”).
- Order rows and columns deliberately, not alphabetically by default. Consider ordering by total size, strategic importance, or clustering similar patterns together.
- Avoid overloading with too many rows/columns on a main slide. If you have 50 rows, either:
- Focus on a subset, or
- Use the heat map in an appendix and present a simplified summary on the main page.
A good heat map lets an executive say things like: “We systematically underperform in Region X across most products,” or “These three capabilities are weak everywhere; this one is strong only in BU A.”
11.4 Combination charts (e.g., column + line)
Combination charts overlay two chart types (most commonly columns and a line) to show two related but distinct views of the same data.
Classic examples:
- Revenue as columns with margin% as a line.
- Volume as columns with price as a line.
- Number of customers as columns with satisfaction (NPS) as a line.
Use a combination chart when:
- The metrics are conceptually linked, and you want to see them together for each period or category.
- One metric is best understood as a volume or level (columns) and the other as a rate or ratio (line).
- You want to answer questions like “Are we trading margin for growth?” or “Is satisfaction keeping up with scale?”
Guidelines (and warnings):
Be very cautious with dual axes:
- Use dual axes only when absolutely necessary (e.g., revenue in $M and margin in %).
- Make sure both axes are clearly labeled, including units.
- Avoid manipulating scales to make trends appear artificially correlated.
Consider instead:
- Keeping both metrics on the same axis if they are in compatible units (e.g., index both to 100).
- Or using two aligned charts (stacked vertically) that share the same x-axis, if dual axes feel confusing.
Make the visual hierarchy clear: decide which series is primary.
- Use a stronger color and slightly thicker stroke for the primary line or darker fill for the primary columns.
- Make the secondary measure more muted; it is context, not the star.
Combination charts are most effective when they support a specific narrative: “Revenue has grown strongly, but margin has steadily declined,” not when they are used to cram unrelated numbers onto one page.
11.5 Using shape and area to show structure without confusing the reader
All the charts in this chapter rely more heavily on shape and area than simple bars or lines. This is powerful but risky. Human perception is very good at comparing position and length; it is much worse at comparing area and angle.
A few principles will keep you on the safe side:
- Use area only when it truly adds insight
- Mekko: area represents “share of total market × share within market,” which directly answers a structural strategy question.
- Tile charts and proportional rectangles: area reinforces the sense of concentration and dominance.
- If you can tell the same story with simple bars just as well, do that.
- Avoid unnecessary dimensions
- Do not pile on meaning: color + area + pattern + shape + annotation, all in one.
- At most, use two encodings strongly (e.g., area + color) and keep everything else minimal.
- Make the mapping from data to shape explicit
- For area-based charts, explain in the title or subtitle what area represents (“Area = market size; height = share of segment”).
- For heat maps, define the color scale clearly (“Darker = higher profitability”).
- Test interpretability at a glance
- If you cover labels and legend and the chart collapses into an abstract pattern, it is probably too complex for a main storyline slide.
- For portfolio or structural charts, the executive should be able to answer, in seconds: “Where are we big? Where are we small? Where are we strong or weak?”
- Reserve complex structural charts for “anchor” pages
- Mekko, heat maps, and large tile or portfolio maps are not meant to be thrown away after a quick glance. They are anchor visuals that the team returns to during the discussion.
- Give them space on the slide. Avoid surrounding them with too many side charts and text boxes.
If you remember that structure charts are for orientation, not for showing every detail, you will use them wisely. They are the maps at the front of the deck that help a client see the whole terrain before you walk them through the specific paths and levers in the rest of your story.
