Up front, here's a sample of what I came up with:

http://vfdrake.home.comcast.net/~vfd...excel/crwp.pdf

I am looking for suggestions to improve this chart, or other ways to
present it. A bit of verbose description is required though, so if you
are so inclined please read on...

We have data for 50-odd companies and the industry as a whole, and want
to show where we stand relative to the fray. There are two key metrics
to consider:

"Combined Ratio" (CR). Values less than 100% are considered best (less
is better). Our target is to be under the industry average CR by at
least 4%.

"Written Premium Growth" (WP). Values above 0% are good (more is
better). Our target is to beat the industry average.

So I tried an x-y chart, with CR (reversed*) on the x-axis and WP on the
y-axis. This puts the ideal range in the upper-right, which most will
recognize as "the quadrant where everything is 'positive'".

I removed the legend for posting, but here's a description of what
things mean:
- big fancy icons are for my group
- red icons are companies that consistently perform well
- blue icons are everyone else
- bold axis lines are industry averages
- dashed line is our CR target==4% less than average
- light green shading is our target area per definitions of CR and WP above

* The first pass had CR plotted low-to-high and was well received
internally but the real audience (board level) was confused because the
target area was in the upper-left quadrant.

I can appreciate this and so changed the sense of the x-axis, but the
more I stare at this chart I feel it isn't telling the story so well,
but I have run out of thoughts on how to improve it. I am loathe to add
more clutter than there already is. Given the ultimate audience I do
want to make choices carefully.

So, any ideas?