Tailoring Your Communication

How to communicate effectively at every level by chunking up, down and across.

If you have ever communicated with people across different levels, you know that the same exact message doesn’t work for everyone.

Once, I was working on a critical database migration and I was juggling communication with three different roles: a junior engineer to assign tasks, a backend developer to coordinate API changes, and my director to provide status updates on the project.

I quickly realized I had to adapt my communication—sometimes zooming out, sometimes diving deeper. I walked away learning an important communication skill from that project which serves me well as an Engineering Manager.

Recently, I learned there’s a method to this madness: chunking up, chunking down, and chunking across. This process helps you choose the right level of abstraction based on your audience. Here’s how you can do this (There's an exercise for you at the end!)

Identify the Chunks

First, pin down what your message is about and then identify the “chunks”. Let’s say the communication is about cars 🚗

Ask yourself:

• What higher level category this could fit in? This is Chunking Up.

  • E.g. Car is a mode of transport, something that takes you from point A to point B.

• What are the components or examples of this? This is Chunking Down.

  • E.g. Parts of a car - steering wheel, engine, etc.

• What’s similar to this? This is Chunking Across.

  • E.g. A scooter or a bus are other modes of transport.

For my database migration, the chunks looked like this:

Once you have identified this, you can easily move up or down from whatever level you’re communicating at. Let’s see this in action.

1. Chunking Up

Chunking up refers to moving from specific, or small scale ideas or pieces of information to more general, larger ones.

When to chunk up:

• Presenting to executives or stakeholders

• Aligning your team with business strategy

• Justifying resources or investments

For the database migration, I told my director, “We’re migrating database to improve scalability. The current status is that it’s 30% done and we’re confident it will be done by the end of the month. No impact for customers.”

Chunking up keeps the focus on the bigger picture, helping your audience see the broader impact rather than getting lost in the details.

2. Chunking Down

Chunking down is going from higher level ideas to more granular details. You need to talk specifics-how the work is going to be done, what’s the plan, the timeline.

When to chunk down:

• Sprint planning and Daily standups

• Debugging issues

• Breaking down tasks

For my example, with the junior engineer instead of saying, “The database migration is on track,” I chunked down to, “We need to run the script to create the tables in advance and write a migration job to move the data. Let’s talk about downtime and testing.”

Chunking down clarifies the next steps and technical challenges, ensuring the other person knows exactly what to do.

3. Chunking Across

When working cross teams, chunking across helps connect the dots laterally. It helps you talk about dependencies in a way others will understand.

When to chunk across:

• Leading cross-functional initiatives

• Facilitating team collaboration

• Managing dependencies across departments

In my case, the API developer had worked with Postgres but not DynamoDB. I focused on the similarities and differences between the two. “The connection string for this database is gonna look like this instead of that.”

Chunking across ensures smooth collaboration by connecting two different levels of knowledge in different areas.

---

Be Ready To Switch

As an Engineering Manager, your ability to switch between chunking directions, sometimes on the fly, is crucial. You might start a meeting by chunking up to provide context, then chunk down to talk through specifics, and finally chunk across to inform about the work on the dependent team.

Here’s a quick guide:

• Chunk up for executive updates

• Chunk down for team clarity

• Chunk across for cross-functional alignment

When you do all three successfully, you establish yourself someone who understands both the big picture and the implementation details, and stakeholders will view you as a partner.

---

Bonus Tip: Chunk Up to Resolve Conflicts

I use chunking up not just for status reports, but also as a tool to resolve conflicts with others.

Recently, I disagreed with an architect on which project should take higher priority. We were at a standstill, until I chunked up. Instead of arguing about specifics, we zoomed out to find common ground. And guess what? We both wanted the same thing—to improve developer productivity.

Once you align on the big picture and know you’re on the same side, the collaboration becomes easier. Then you can discuss about which project or solution helps achieve this shared goal.

---

Exercise For You!

Imagine you're leading a team that is rolling out a major backend refactor for your company’s e-commerce platform.

You need to communicate to three different stakeholders: your manager, your senior engineer and your product manager. Talk about the status of the project!

Remember to Chunk up, down and across. Let me know your response in the comments!

---