chunks

by Steve Johnson
<scj@transmeta.com>

Steve Johnson has been a technical manager on and off for nearly two decades. At AT&T, he's best known for writing Yacc, Lint, and the Portable Compiler.

and Dusty White
<dustywhite@earthlink.net>

Dusty White works as a management consultant in Silicon Valley, where she acts as a trainer, coach, and trouble-shooter for technical companies.

Programmers are used to moving easily up and down levels of abstraction. A directory is made up of files. Each file may have many records, each record many fields, each field many bytes. Expressions give rise to statements, grouped into functions, libraries, and then applications. The ability to operate over so many levels of abstraction is arguably one of the traits that makes us human.

Managers who can move up and down levels of abstraction will be able to use this skill easily and effectively in dealing with people, even those who are not programmers, provided they understand some simple principles. But first some terminology.

As we get more and more abstract, we deal with larger and larger chunks of data. As we get more concrete, we deal with smaller and smaller chunks of data. Imagine a hierarchy of ideas or concepts with the most abstract and all-embracing at the top and the most concrete at the bottom. When we "chunk up," we move up the hierarchy of ideas. When we "chunk down," we get more and more concrete.

So, starting with a person Joe, we might chunk up to see Joe as a male New Yorker, then as a New Yorker, then as an American, then as human, then as a living entity. Or we might chunk down from Joe and examine his face, and then his eyes, and then his left retina, then a single cell in the retina, and so on.

Chunking is a good concept for a manager to understand, because many communication difficulties involve mismatched chunk sizes. Joe may use smaller chunks than Bob and see Bob as vague and kind of sleep-inducing when he talks. Bob may see Joe as terribly boring and "caught up in detail." In meetings, Joe may get "picky" and slow the meeting down.

As a manager, you probably need to process bigger chunks than your employees and smaller chunks than your manager. Ideally, your employees will learn that you don't want to hear all the details of their jobs, and you will learn the same about your manager.

It is useful to be able to "chunk up" and "chunk down" when you need to improve communication. When talking to someone using bigger chunks, you can ask the question, "What, specifically?" to get more details. When talking to someone using smaller chunks, you can ask, "What is the intention of this?" or "What is this an instance of?" to encourage larger chunks.

There are many ways to chunk up and chunk down. Frequently, you can get a meeting or discussion back on track by chunking up and then chunking down a different way. We tend to differ less on the bigger-chunk items. Most people in a meeting could agree on such sweeping statements as "We want the company to succeed." So when there is disagreement, chunking up to a place where people agree can help to defuse the tension and give everyone more context. You can then carefully chunk down, preserving agreement, to develop the details that you need to.

There are two very useful ways a manager can "chunk up" an employee. The employee's job can be seen in the context of the team and the entire company. Something that may be undesirable or unpleasant to the employee may appear more tolerable when the employee understands its importance in the workings of the entire company. Another way of chunking up a job is to see it in the context of the employee's career. Ask the employee where she wants to be in five or ten years. Sometimes a job that doesn't hold a lot of attraction to an employee is a logical step on the path he really needs to travel to reach his career goals. By seeing the job that way, both you and the employee can change your attitudes toward it.

We will have more to say about dealing with unhappy employees in our next column.