I’m not sure if I have coined this term or not—likely someone else has thought of it before me—but when I used it recently in a coaching conversation, the woman I was coaching knew exactly what I meant by it.
When you have a big, overwhelming project, take it and break it down into small manageable chunks. For example, let’s say you want to implement a discipleship process across a network of churches. That’s a lot to do, so you need to break it down into bite-sized pieces. You need to chunkify it.
You figure out who is receptive in which churches (1), and you have to communicate with them to get them on board (2). What content, curriculum or process will you use? (3) You’ll need to identify coaches or disciplers who will facilitate the process (4), then orient them to what they’ll need to be doing (5). Based on that, you’ll decide what to do for training (6) and then supporting (7) these coaches. How will you then maintain momentum (8), make the process reproducible (9), and ensure you keep the core leadership on board and supportive (10).
It gets pretty complex and pretty overwhelming pretty fast. And this is far from a comprehensive list. The whole process may take 2-3 years, so you’ll need to sit down and chart out all the different pieces, breaking them down into small enough chunks to avoid becoming frozen or overwhelmed. Then put them in the order you need to do them. Then schedule blocks of time to be able to work on each of those tasks. Ask yourself periodically: “What’s the one most important thing?” and “What’s the next thing on your list?”