Chunking Up

When I was working in the disability service sector, I was asked to get involved with a family whose services were not going well. More particularly, the mother of a young adult we were supporting did not think they were going well. She had made a number of complaints. I was told “they are a problem family” and warned that I would not be likely to get a reasonable response from mum. I was appreciative of the warning, but I reckon it wasn’t particularly helpful, as it predisposed me to an adversarial conversation. A few people before me had been in vigorous arguments with her about the service and not reached any suitable solutions. Mostly the interactions led to more complaints.

When I first met mum she was angry about a lot of things. She was entirely justified about a number of them. The volume of things she was unhappy about was big and some of the things were not solvable, so I chunked up. Chunking up is moving away from detail toward principle. If you go far enough, you eventually find territory where instead of arguing 2 sides, you both agree. For that mum and me it was that we both cared about high quality of life for her son.

Chunking up to a point of agreement allows two (or more) people to get away from adversarial positions and start on the same side. If you can find a bigger principle that is true for both and connect about that, then it’s easier to work back down into the details. Look at the details through the principle. “Does (detail) contribute or erode higher quality of life?” is a more useful conversation than arguing head to head over details. It becomes easier to see what is important to both parties, what should be fought for, and what should be compromised.

It took a number of sessions, immediate actions on some stuff that wasn’t great, more proactive changes and compromises for both of us, before everyone was satisfied with the service.

Where could you chunk up for a more effective conversation?