Manageable Chunks: From Teaching in Tokyo to Training and Change Management

In another life (I've had a few), I taught English to business executives in Tokyo. It was, in many ways, a surreal experience. Imagine a 20-something year old drama school graduate standing in front of (mostly) ultra-reserved accomplished leaders. People who were used to commanding boardrooms, negotiating complex deals, and managed hundreds, if not thousands of employees—suddenly struggling to tell me about how they'd spent their weekend.

Not a legitimate picture of me in my 20s :)

Some enthusiastically tried to express themselves in their non-native tongue, while others struggled in an awkwardly tense way, frantically searching their brain for the appropriate word or phrase in English.

These were people used to being the expert in the room, and now were stumbling over basic grammar structures IN FRONT of their colleagues. As someone who spent five years struggling to learn Japanese, I totally empathized.

The key to helping them (and me in my own studies) succeed? A deceptively simple concept from my TESL training: manageable chunks.

The Power of Small Steps

The principle isn't rocket science: break complex concepts into smaller, digestible pieces so learners aren't overwhelmed. Instead of teaching present tense, past tense, and future tense in one session, you focus on mastering one before introducing the next. You don't throw all irregular verbs at someone simultaneously—you introduce them gradually, building confidence with each small victory.

It's a psychological strategy because language learning takes guts and you have to balance the goal of learning with the risks of making mistakes that can sometimes make you feel foolish.

How Manageable Chunks Apply to Transformation

In hindsight of course, the idea of teaching English in "manageable chunks" taught me a lot about how humans navigate new territory and, over the years, also see how this concept applies to idea development and transformation.

In idea development, resisting the urge to present fully-formed "let's implement now" concepts and instead testing smaller chunks, gathering feedback, and then using these learnings to build iteratively is invaluable to mitigating risk and building something that people actually want and need. Each chunk gets validated before the next layer goes on so that you're (hopefully) not building a giant failure of a solution.

In project management, breaking down ambitious initiatives into phases, helps teams put one foot in front of the other to take small, intentional actions. Rather than paralyzing people with the enormity of transformation, you focus on what's immediately ahead—the next milestone, the current sprint, this quarter's goals, etc.

In change adoption, Asking people to embrace new ways of working isn't really all that different from asking executives to speak a foreign language. Both require you to let go of familiar or comfortable patterns and risk looking silly (can we all just agree that none of us should take ourselves too seriously?). Both demand patience, repetition, and incremental progress.

Why Chunks Work

Manageable chunks work because they:

• Reduce cognitive overload, so people can actually absorb what they're learning (and maybe master it) instead of simply surviving the experience

• Build momentum through quick wins that create confidence and motivation

• Create psychological safety by making failure smaller and less consequential at each step

• Are more respectful by not forcing people to show the full extent of their unfamiliarity all at once

That last point matters in a big way (especially to ultra-serious Japanese business leaders). Whether you're an executive learning English or a team learning new software, being a newbie is downright uncomfortable. Manageable chunks let people preserve their "image" of "expert" while allowing them to stretch their skills/knowledge in a more gentle "baby steps" kind of way. And that helps them save face.

The Impatience Trap

Manageable chunks take some patience—from leaders, from teams, from ourselves. And that can sometimes be in short supply. You want the change to happen now. You want people to "just get it" and move on. You might be tempted to skip steps, combine phases, accelerate timelines.

But here's what I learned in those Tokyo classrooms: rushing doesn't necessarily speed things up and overwhelm can up the likelihood that nothing sticks. Those executives (and anecdotally it usually was the "big shot" in the room) who tried to leap ahead, cramming new vocabulary or idioms into their dialogue often ended up more confused, more frustrated, and more embarrassed. The ones who trusted the process, who allowed themselves to really master each chunk, ultimately progressed faster and further.

The same holds true for organizational change. The team that implements one new workflow well before adding another will outpace the team that tries to overhaul everything simultaneously. This idea was reinforced when I did my change management training and the phrase of the week was "slow is fast and fast is slow."

Start Where You Are

If you're leading any kind of change—a new strategy, a cultural shift, a process improvement—ask yourself: how can I break this down into manageable chunks?

What's the smallest piece your team could try first? What's one capability they could build before adding complexity?

Where can you create an early win that builds confidence for what comes next?

The most powerful changes rarely happen all at once. They happen in manageable chunks, one small victory at a time.

Just like learning a language.

かんたんですね?