Chunking is a critical cognitive meta-skill. 🧊
It helps you organize information, enhances memory, and makes it easier to communicate and share ideas.
🌟 Why it Matters
Chunking breaks down complex information into smaller, more manageable pieces. In the reverse direction, chunking groups and consolidates smaller pieces into more meaningful larger parts that make sense. Whether approached from the top down or bottom up, chunking is an intuitive yet powerful mental skill applicable to both everyday tasks and long-range thinking.
🧮 Everyday Application
Consider this number: 6567995388
Not so easy to memorize, right?
Now, let’s chunk it: 65-6799-5388.
That’s the power of chunking! We use this technique for everyday things like phone numbers. (By the way, that’s INSEAD‘s phone number in Singapore.)
➿ Application in Agile
Chunking is an integral practice in Agile Scrum.
It’s overwhelming to plan what and how to build a product, particularly if it is complex in nature.
So in Scrum, we break down the product concept into smaller chunks called “epics.” These epics are further divided into “stories,” which outline what we aim to achieve within those epics. Once we have identified the stories we want to develop, we break them down into bite-sized “tasks.”
We typically use Kanban boards for managing workflow in Scrum. A simple Kanban board may just list tasks, but it’s better and easier to manage them in chunks here too, since we already have the development targets organized into an epic-story-task hierarchy along with the work they entail. Here’s how to build a “chunked” Kanban board: https://agile-od.com/mmdojo/11510/how-to-build-a-kanban-board-from-scratch
🗣 Application in Communication
When a leader communicates in a linear way — reading out a to-do list from the top — by the time they get through to the end, people will pretty much forget anything from the earlier part.
Rather, if they communicate in a chunked way, starting with, for example, “Okay, so we have three main things this week: A, B, and C,” it’s much easier for the team to recall what was shared.
Chunked communication is particularly helpful for sharing complex topics. A complex concept, when packaged and labeled at a high level and then explained in varying degrees of granularity as needed, is less overwhelming and easier to grasp.
💫 TL;DR
Chunking is a must-have skill for leaders to manage and communicate complex matters effectively.
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