Is that 2x2 graphic a table, a chart, or a matrix? Should the axis go from left to right, or right to left?

Those who lecture us about analyzing business topics love to make up 2x2 graphics and describe them via two different factors to create four categories. When the factors are qualitative (low and high) the result is a 2x2 table, as is shown above. 

One well-known example of a 2x2 table appears on page 151 of Stephen R. Covey’s 1989 book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People – where, as shown above, it is mistakenly labeled as The Time Management Matrix. Also, the first factor (Urgent or Not Urgent) seems to be in backward order. It does make sense - if you think of it as instead being Low Time Required for a Response and High Time Required for a Response. But Mr. Covey should have relabeled it or added a better explanation. 

I revised his table (as shown above) by switching the order to Not Urgent and Urgent, and adding a title for each box to indicate the response. The Wikipedia article on Time Management refers to this graphic as an ABCD analysis but does not mention Covey. It also refers to the process as being The Eisenhower Method. An article at DecisionSkills titled Using the Eisenhower Matrix discusses it. On August 19, 1954 at the Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Evanston, Illinois President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave a speech titled The Logistics of Faith (for which you can find the text at The American Presidency Project or in Vital Speeches of the Day). He quoted the president of Northwestern University, James Roscoe Miller, M.D., as having said that:

“I have two kinds of problems – the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important and the important are never urgent.”

At his Quote Investigator web site Garson O’Toole discussed that quotation and its variations in an article titled What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.

When the two factors instead are quantitative the result is a 2x2 chart with four quadrants (commonly known as a two dimensional x-y graph), as is shown above. It’s also not a matrix. In another post I will discuss the so-called BCG Matrix and the Leadership Communication Matrix.