18: “Decolonization” & the legacy of the plantation in our workplace (with Podge Thomas)

Jul 8

In today’s episode, I sat down with the amazing Podge Thomas, founder of Small Business Co-Pilot. Our word? “Decolonization,” especially how it relates to our workplaces. I know it sounds heavy (and it is), but it’s also important,

Podge brings a unique perspective as a business strategist passionate about reimagining workplace practices.

Our conversation covers:

The etymology and history of words like "colonize" and "decolonization"
How colonial legacies continue to influence our work environments
Practical approaches to reimagining hiring processes and other business systems
Using tools like Notion to build more equitable workplace structures

Podge's expertise reminds us that we don't have to replicate harmful corporate structures - we can create something better

Note: Transcripts are AI generated. Please excuse any errors! :)
Nicole: Hi, Podge. I'm so excited to have you here today.
Podge: Hi, Nicole. Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.
Nicole: For everyone tuning in, I have the amazing Podge Thomas here with me. She is the founder of Small Business Co Pilot and a genius with Notion which I'm obsessed with. I would not call myself a genius with Notion, but I do like love it so much.
It has changed the way I do my business. So. We can totally geek out a little bit on that if you want. And Podge works with forward thinking women and non binary business owners to decolonize the workplace, which is very central to what we'll be talking about today. Is there anything you would add to that bio Podge?
Podge: You know, just that I think it's hard to think about or it's been hard for me anyway, to wrap my head around the idea of combining technology, which I really associate with sort of dominant culture and decolonizing the workplace. So I'm really excited to, you know, talk a little bit about this today.
Nicole: [00:02:00] Yeah.
Yeah. And so we are going to talk about, you know, pretty important word and a pretty layered and deep word. And I want to acknowledge up front that I doubt we will get to the bottom of it in an hour. But we're going to talk about all the layers and that word is decolonization, which I know is a big part of your work Podge.
So can you tell us a bit more about your experience with the word and the way that you work and just. Your personal experience with it.
Podge: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I grew up in the UK. Which is like, you know, the mother of colonialism and imperialism, I feel like, and I grew up there because that's where my parents landed.
It's not where my parents are from. So growing up, I didn't think about that. Colonialism or colonization in any way. And when I was about 20, 21, I moved to the U S I'd spent a lot of time in the U [00:03:00] S growing up. My mom is from New York city. Well, she's actually from Brooklyn and she's African American and she's native American.
And these are things that I knew about myself, but these were not. Aspects of my identity that I was connected to for a lot of different reasons. Not least of which is colonialism, right? Colonialism has definitely created generations of sort of fractured families, especially African American families and Native American families.
I'm sure we'll get into that a little bit. So, 20, I don't know, 6, 27 years, something like that. And Over the last, you know, probably 20 of those years, I have kind of radicalized myself. Right. I've come to a much deeper understanding about. our systems of harm, right? And how the [00:04:00] legacies of those systems still exist in our world today.
And so, you know, it's not a particularly interesting story, this sort of journey into coming to think about decolonization. But the thing I think is worth underlining is that because Of colonialism, right? I, I no longer have access to the knowledge and the traditions that my ancestors had access to that that has been taken away from me by force has been taken away from other people who look like me.
Other people who identify in the ways that I identify. And that has really affected us on every level that has affected us spiritually. It's definitely affected us mentally and it's affected us physically as well, right? My life expectancy is not the same as white folks because of these systems of harm.
And [00:05:00] how that ended up tying in to this idea of decolonizing the workplace is that. Every job I ever had, I just, I always felt really shitty. Is it okay to swear? I won't swear. Yes. No, go ahead. I just, I felt really shitty. I always felt like I was under suspicion. I always felt the, this insecurity, right?
What if I could lose my job and the insecurity attached to that? I always felt like I was being watched, being monitored, being judged. In almost every job I ever had, I came to a place of burnout, which I say the word burnout because I think it's recognizable for people, but it's really trauma, especially for women of color at work.
There's a lot of practices that companies, small businesses, nonprofits government [00:06:00] entities engage in that are really damaging for the humans that work there. And so when I left my last job, which was like almost exactly seven years ago. I always knew that I wanted to start a business and I always felt like an entrepreneur.
I'm one of those people who I don't think that you need to start a business to be an entrepreneur. I think an entrepreneur is just like, it's like who you are. If you're an entrepreneur, you're an entrepreneur. You don't need a business to be an entrepreneur. It's just a certain way of looking at the world and being in the world.
So I didn't know what exactly I was going to do, but I had gone to business school and I had worked in small businesses for decades, and I really understood that world, so I just began helping out a few friends here and then, and they connected me with some other people. And I was working primarily with women and non binary business owners.
I've always worked with women, non binary folks [00:07:00] who were in their first, like one or two years of business. And they just needed to understand some of the things that for me were very obvious or not even necessarily obvious, but. I had that knowledge because I had been in that world for so long and there were just certain things I didn't know.
So it was helping them navigate these different aspects of business, you know, marketing and finance, all these different pieces that you just figure out, you know, as a, as a business owner. And as time went on that sort of general business strategy really started to focus in on operations and management, which.
I began to call employee stewardship, which is sort of the word I use instead of management and instead of human resources, that it was. Very easy and intuitive for me to see what wasn't working [00:08:00] and what could be instead. And that's where I began to focus. So my clients, I was working with clients who had teams.
I was working with clients who had no operational foundation. And then I found Notion, which was completely. A game changer. You mentioned this earlier, right? It just, cause I'm neurodivergent. So I was trying to always fit my brain, my round brain into a square hole. I was always trying to do that my whole life and notion.
Gosh, I wish I'd had notion as a young person notion gave me the ability to, to create systems that followed my brain. Right? So when I work with people around, you know, Creating operations or world building operations, right. And notion I'm not so prescriptive about how they do it, whether they're a solopreneur or whether they work with a team, I really want to hear about how does your brain work and how are you thinking about your relationship with the people you work with?[00:09:00]
And we go from there because I do think. We have wisdom. We have so much wisdom and knowledge inside of us that colonialism has sort of eviscerated and has replaced with the sort of cookie cutter things that we all do sometimes without conscious knowledge. Right? So I really love to explore with my clients.
How are you thinking about this already? What kind of experience would you like to create at work? What are you already doing that you want to question or that we should look at together and see if it's what you need or what you want or what makes sense. And then let's design together what you'd like it to look like.
And for me, operations supports all of that activity. It supports all of the action that you take inside of your business. It supports the work that you do with your clients. It supports your marketing strategies. It supports how you work with your team. It supports all of it. So I want the strategy and I want to know.
Where we're [00:10:00] going, I want to map all of that out. And then I want to make it actionable because that's. When the rubber hits the road, I want to be able to sit down and like, press the button and do the thing. Right. And have it all in front of me. That's what it's all about. I'm not only just satisfied with making a plan.
I want to put it into action as well. Gosh, I went in really a bit of a roundabout there, but I hope I answered your question and maybe said some other things that are potentially interesting.
Nicole: Yes, absolutely. And, and I know we're focusing on the word decolonization today, and I want to get into that, but I The way that I love the way that you choose the right words for what you're doing.
Like, I see a few places like world world building with notion or using employees stewardship instead of human resources. Like, there are a few different places where you mentioned phrases that seem. You've just, you've renamed a thing and in a way that seems like part of decolonization, right? To rename it so that it's more appropriate to what you are doing.[00:11:00]
Podge: Yeah, that's right. And sometimes that's the easy part, right? Coming up with a new name. The hard part is actually being able to see how colonialism Is presenting itself in the businesses that we create right in the relationships that we have with other people. That's really, really hard. And I think for me, like, I just spent a lot of time looking at HR thinking you're like the police department in my company.
Nicole: Yeah,
Podge: you know, like you're like judge jury and executioner. That's a lot of power. And I was thinking, well, what, what, what is this thing, right? Why do we have this HR department? And I, you know, I did some research and I began to understand the origins of, of, of human resources, where that came from. It came from the UK and why it was there.
And it really was originally set up actually by this philosopher, I forget his name. He was this philosopher and his, I [00:12:00] think it was like the family of his wife that he married into, they owned a manufacturing company somewhere in the North of England. And, You know, he could really see that these folks were being overworked.
Right. And this is back when people worked seven days a week or six days a week, 12 hours a day. Right. It was insane. And he was just like, this doesn't seem right. And these people seem really unhappy. I wonder if we change the conditions a little bit, if we, we could actually create. The same amount of productivity or even more if people were happier.
So those were the origins, right? It actually came from a good place, but where it's ended up and I'll get to the wording, right. Cause I want to talk about, I know you want to put the wedding. I want to talk about it too, where we ended up. Is with this system, right? This department, the HR department, which is, it presents itself as being there for the employee, but it's not.
We all know that the human resources is there to protect [00:13:00] the company at all costs. And so you end up with these really intense, you know, workflows and processes inside of companies. That have put in place to mitigate sometimes the smallest risk to the company and the threat that the company feels. It's not just to the company.
It's to the bottom line, right? Might be to the shareholders, but it's definitely to whoever's at the top making the most money, right? It's for them. It's really for them. So in terms of decolonization, right, where we're removing the effects of colonialism, right, where colonialism has come in to subjugate the people and to take everything that they want.
And capitalism comes into play here, right? Because we, we build as people, we build around Right. Thanks. You know, the home when we build [00:14:00] around work. So you subjugate the people, you take everything that you want to take for yourself, physical, and then you put in place regulation to make sure that nothing changes.
So that's what we look at when we look at your business, whether you're working on your own, whether you work in a team, whether you're at the corporate level, right? I work with small businesses, but if you're at the corporate level, maybe you work for a big nonprofit or a government organization. Yeah. We have to really look at what, what did we put in place here without even thinking about it?
And small, right? Small business owners often come from a place of work, right? They have been employees before. And so they start their own businesses. And they grow and they hire people and they think, Oh, what do I do to hire people? Well, I have to do, you know, I have to [00:15:00] drop a job description. I have to write the job.
And that is a really easy place to look at where, where we can make improvements because I don't think I've ever, ever, ever worked with a new client who hasn't just replicated. The hiring process from where from wherever it was that they have worked in the past. We all do. And it makes a lot of sense.
We go, we need to hire somebody when we, we sort of like make a mental checklist. Okay, let's go and do that without really thinking about it. But if we look at the hiring process, there is. The concentration of power sits almost entirely with the employer and there's almost no power that the employee has, and there's not a good reason for it except to have control and power.
Right. So those are the things that we're looking for. We're looking for, where is the power in this system and does it make sense for the power to be there? Is it necessary? Is it, is it really [00:16:00] necessary? Small business owners have. A lot more flexibility, right? I could work with corporate, maybe I think I would hate it, but I could work with corporate so much inflexibility there though.
It's very hard to, to shift systems inside of big, big companies, but with small businesses, there's a lot of choice, right? If I'm sitting down face to face with a business owner who has a team of maybe five or 10 people, I can have this conversation and we can actually talk about the systems and we can look at them and we can see what changes we want to make.
Nicole: Hmm. I love that. I, cause I came from a big marketing firm background and I'm at the point in my business where I actually just had a call this morning where I'm thinking of hiring. So this, this is relevant for you. Well timed for me. Yeah. My first hire, cause of course my first instinct would have been, Oh, how did my old agency used to do it?
How can I mimic that process. But now after talking to you for. [00:17:00] 10 minutes. I'm going to do it differently. So thank you. Oh, that's amazing. Okay. There's so much I want to ask you about, but let's, let's talk about the definition of decolonization. And I want to break this word down because the word contains many words inside of it, right?
We have decolonization, decolonize, colony. And then of course the prefix, you know, D, what does that mean? So. Let's I want to do this in sections. So let's start by looking at some of the modern Merriam Webster definitions. And then just we can talk about it after each section of the of the definitions.
So in the modern definition, it says decolonization is to free a people or area from colonial status status to relinquish control of a subjugated people or area. And the second definition of the modern in the modern dictionary is to free from the dominating influence of a colonizing power, especially to identify, [00:18:00] challenge, and revise or replace assumptions, ideas, values, and practices that reflect A colonizer is dominating influence, especially a Eurocentric dominating influence. And then just to break it down mathematically before we start looking at the etymology of the word is the modern definition of colonize, right, is to take control. Of a people or area, especially as an extension of state power, right? And then the prefix D essentially, I just want to call it out, but it means reversal do the opposite of to remove, to reduce to get off of okay.
So those are the modern definitions I want to look at. What are any thoughts spring to mind as I was reading those? Did anything stand out to you?
Podge: You know, in terms of the. In terms of the actual wording, no, what, you know, what you and I both in the U S and that's my perspective. So I'm going to speak from that perspective, but when I, when I, [00:19:00] Hear the word colonization, colonialism, colony. When I, when I hear that language, I think about African American, the African American population.
And I think about the native American population, right? Like the, these are the two groups of people that have been most impacted by colonialism, right? And so we have now this legacy, you know, a couple of hundred years later. And it lives inside of our brains as much as it lives inside. It lives in the outside world, you know,
Nicole: yeah, absolutely.
And then one thing that I think is interesting to do is there's this resource online called the 1828 Merriam Webster dictionary. So I want to read that out loud and then and compare them because I think it's interesting to compare. Or to see how definitions change over time, right? So 1828, the definition of the word colonize specifically is [00:20:00] to plant or establish a colony in, to plant or settle a number of the subjects of a kingdom or state in a remote country for the purpose of cultivation, commerce, or defense, and for permanent residence. So to me, and I do, I want to hear your thoughts, but one of the main, one of the main differences is. That the modern definition is more appropriately aggressive. It uses language like to take, to claim, right? This 1828 definition has this like purpose of cultivation and commerce in the definition, which is interesting.
Yeah. But what are your thoughts on hearing those two?
Podge: Yeah, it's a much more positive outlook, isn't it? You know, and I, I, I wonder if at that point, this definition was aspirational whereas now we're looking back on it. And we could argue about whether we should be looking back on it, right.
And, and what Neocolonialism is. So now we can actually characterize it more accurately, right. And see it [00:21:00] for what it, what it is and what it was, which was much more nefarious than this 18, 18, 28 definition. Right? And I, and
the time of imperialism, the British monarchs really, it's heyday of imperialism, right? They really saw this as an innovation. They saw imperialism as an innovation. They really, you know, the British monarchy and the British elite really felt like they had dialed it in and they really felt like we just need to take this global, you know, let's really, let's just spread this message far and wide.
And You know, and by force if necessary. And of course it had to be by force because their engagement with other civilizations, other cultures, other countries, other groups of people, these were already very [00:22:00] sophisticated, well established societies. Right? So the hubris that's kind of what it is.
Mm-Hmm. . When we, when, when you read out that 1828 definition, it's hubris.
Nicole: Yes.
Podge: Right. And we just don't think about it like that anymore. I mean, I'm sure that there are some people who still think, yeah, yeah, that was a good idea. But I think that there are many of us look back and go, you know what, that, that actually wasn't very fair.
You know, that really wasn't very, that wasn't, it wasn't kind. It wasn't the right thing to do. You know, and the colonialism story. On the U S side is very different from what, you know, when we think of imperialism and you look to, you know, African countries and places like India.
Right. Because you know, who set the people that settled here originally that came from England, these were the misfits, right? These are the criminals, right. They got sent to the U S to Canada and to [00:23:00] Australia. Right. So, you know, and there were the Puritans as well. And. After the war, there was no, there was no you know, legal state reach that the United Kingdom could have in the US.
They certainly can, they certainly were successful with that in other countries. Right. But, but it's yeah, it is. It's, it's. I really, I really, I like this. It's a little bit tongue in cheek, but I like thinking of, I like thinking about colonialism as aspirational. You know, sometimes I need to have, sometimes I need to find ways to laugh at this because it's heavy.
Yes, you know, especially because this is my lineage. It's feels really heavy sometimes. So I like being able to chuckle about it a little bit.
Nicole: Yeah, just a couple weeks ago. I talked to on this podcast about the word wilderness. And I don't know if you know much about the history of that, but this is hearkening back to that because the.
The [00:24:00] colonizers that came from Europe, like that was part of it. Like it was in pursuit of this, like idealized wilderness. So and then they arrived and they're like, oh we don't know how to survive here in this wilderness. Like they were, it was like romantic period of the paintings of the wilderness that they no longer had as much of in Europe.
So yeah. So the word you used this like aspirational, I think that's the word you use, like that ties back to this idea of claiming the wilderness. And you mentioned the Puritans too, part of their mission was to tame the wilderness and to subjugate the wilderness in general, because they thought that they were ordained to take this land.
Podge: It's really intense.
Nicole: Yeah. Very intense. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you get the, you get the gods involved and it's, it becomes incredibly intense when people think they are just like, have been given the right to something by some deity.
Yeah.
Podge: [00:25:00] That's right. Yeah. It's a, it's a whole different level of entitlement when you bring God into the picture.
Nicole: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Well, the looking at the etymology is very interesting because the etymology of the word and for this research I focused on the word colony, just because that's the one that goes back the furthest.
So, the earliest reference to the word is 14th century so ancient. Roman, sorry, yeah ancient Roman settlements outside of Italy. So it's from the Latin word colonia, which means settled land, farm, landed estate. And from colonus, which is husbandman, tenant, farmer, settler in the new land. So what I thought was interesting here is this The word colony kind of focused on this idea of farming,
and also the Romans used the word to translate the Greek word apoikia, which is a settlement far from home. So
Podge: it's like a vacation [00:26:00] property. Like a vacation
Nicole: property.
Podge: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's my cabin in Maine. That was something else. There was another word in there that you used that made me realize. That even this early, oh, you said 14th century?
Nicole: Late 14th century. Yeah.
Podge: Something about the, something about paternal. Was it something about men or?
Nicole: Oh, husbandmen.
Podge: Hus, husbandmen. Yeah. So, yeah, I sometimes think about the patriarchy and paternalism as the original sin.
Nicole: Hmm.
Podge: I don't know that we would have ended up with colonialism.
If men didn't have so much power from such an early time, right? That this This is, it's somewhat implicit when we think about colonialism, [00:27:00] and we think about decolonization, we think about these ideas, there is an, there's an implicit piece in there, especially, you know, if you're on the spectrum of sort of feminism or you womanist, these kinds of things, right?
Maybe it's a bit more obvious, but it is implicit that this is the work of men. You know, and so it's interesting to see that when I think about, yes, we're going to take this land so we can tell the land and we can have a, like, the, these are decisions. These are things that these are decisions that the men would have made, you know, men continue to get us into trouble.
Don't they? I think they do. Yeah.
Nicole: Which is funny you say that because another part of the etymology that I didn't even read out loud I was going to skip it, but now I think it's too relevant. Yeah, it's. Colere, which means to inhabit, to frequent, to [00:28:00] respect, to tend, to guard, which I thought that was fascinating that it's,
Podge: yeah.
Okay. So, you know, that makes me think of stewardship, right? And I, yeah. Right? Like, I think about certainly from a Native American perspective, and I don't want to speak for all tribes, so I'll just speak for my own, that we consider ourselves to be stewards of the land. And that's kind of what you just said, right?
So there was at some point, perhaps the reverence for. What we needed from this earth in order to survive, right? Where there was a, there was a respect and a reference that, that. We understood the importance of being in harmony with the land because that's how we could feed ourselves. That's how we could protect ourselves.
And that guardianship piece I'm interested, I'm curious about, because is this, you know, is this to guard from your neighbor? Right. Is this to guard from the [00:29:00] state? Is this to like, what, what is that guardian? It, you know, is it more of a guardianship in the sense of stewardship? Right. What is the, what's the sort of protection there?
But that's what I'm, I'm getting kind of a hint you know, a hint of that. Sometimes it's hard for me to imagine. I don't know if you ever think about this. Sometimes it's hard for me to imagine how many people do we have on this planet? Seven, 8 million billion. Sorry.
Nicole: Yeah.
Podge: It's hard for me to imagine 600 years ago when there would have been just far fewer people.
Right. We've really raked this land, right, in order to survive. We do have a lot of people here. We require a lot of resources. But back then, you didn't have the ability to travel long distances. You just weren't having to navigate so many people. And that, you know, You would have spent most of your time on whatever, you know, land or property that sustained you and your family.
So that's really all you would have been thinking about, right? You're just thinking [00:30:00] about to an extent, I'm sure being in community, but also taking care of and protecting what it was that you needed to, you know, stay clothed and fed and housed.
Nicole: Yeah. Well, and since the word guard is right next to respect and tend, I am inclined to agree that it seems to be, there's a nugget of stewardship.
Like if you dig back deep enough in time to this word. Yeah. And then if we dig back even deeper the proto Indo European route. So, and I want to say for anyone who's not familiar with this, it's, it's Not a language that's recorded Proto Indo European. It's a language that has been kind of created as a probable, like, origin for all of the, European languages, like spanning from, like, the Iranian area to Russian, like a huge, huge chunk, right, of the European [00:31:00] continent.
And so part of the root of this word in, in Proto Indo European is quell, which means to revolve, move around, sojourn, or dwell, and also means far in space or time. As the second definition, but I like the combination of these because it's sojourn and dwell, but also far in space and time.
So there's this feeling of like, almost like a nomadic feeling to it, you know, like dwelling, but also moving.
Podge: Yeah. Which at that time there would, people would have been much more nomadic or semi nomadic.
Nicole: Yeah.
Podge: Staying on the, staying on the move, right. Not, not being quite as situated in one place. Yeah.
Nicole: Yeah. And almost like a search, a search for home kind of feeling comes for it.
Podge: That's, yeah, that's right. It is. It's literal in that way, right? It's settling. It's you know, creating a domicile. It's, you know, finding [00:32:00] a place, finding a place to be, right? That, that makes me think about, Belonging this sense of belonging, right, that we, is so important to our emotional development, knowing, knowing where we belong, having a place where we're safe.
Yeah, it's interesting to start thinking about this in a much softer way.
Nicole: Yeah, well and colonialism as we know it, I think it has disrupted belonging for everyone. And I think that we're like in our culture now, that's constantly something we're searching for. Brene Brown talks about it, like belonging being one of the core things that humans need.
Yeah. And yet we so often don't have it.
Podge: Yeah, that's right. Especially with, you know, globalization, people move around a lot more, you know the sense of belonging, a sense of belonging is, you Disappearing in a number of different ways, not just not just not just by location, but also by by identity, you know?
Yeah. [00:33:00] Yeah.
Nicole: Okay. So now that we've we've dug out the core of the word, which was a fun exercise. Thank you for going on that journey with me. That was fun. Thank you. Okay, so I would love to talk though more about, like your work and I know on your website, which I know is also under renovation and will be new.
It'll be new by the time this episode comes out. Hopefully.
Podge: Hopefully. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully.
Nicole: Awesome. Well, I know on your site previously, I must, maybe you'll still talk about this on the new site too, but you talk about the history of colonization and imperialism and that influence on your work. So can you talk a bit more about that?
Podge: Yeah, so we can, you know, we can create sort of a timeline. I usually start around the 1600s and the enclosure. Movement, so lots of things were happening at this time. So which we've got the enclosure movement, which was happening in the UK, which was the removal of, of land [00:34:00] from the people who lived on it and shared it and shared resources to ownership of that land by the state.
So that that's happening. So we're taking a lot of power away from the people. And we're, we're putting that power into, you know, the hands of the elite, the people who just have more means. At the same time, we've got imperialism, right? We've got the British monarch saying, you know what, let's, you know, let's let's, let's, let's take this on the road, right?
Let's see, let's see if we can get anyone else to buy into this. And then of course, we've got the transatlantic slave trade, which came through very, very heavily through the United Kingdom, mostly through England, but, but throughout the UK. So this was, you know, this was the forcible movement of, you know, 10 to 12 million West Africans essentially to the U.
S., [00:35:00] right? Slavery was outlawed in, in the U. K. fairly soon after it started. That's not to give a pat on the head to the United Kingdom, right? They had plenty of other problems, plenty of other things that they were doing that they shouldn't have been, but certainly the trade continued.
And so, you know, so all, all of this is happening. And then we get to the U. S. So we've got people settling in the U. S., right? Europeans settling in the U. S. We've got the genocide of about 96 percent of all Native Americans within a generation are killed. But we have capitalism, right? We've got now an economy built off of free labor.
Speaker 3: Mm
Podge: hmm. And so now we have a very particular flavor of capitalism. And I don't, I don't, I don't prefer [00:36:00] to get into too much detail about what work, work, free labor would have looked like for the slaves, but we can sort of imagine that, right? We all, we've all seen the films, we've seen the documentaries, we've been to school, we understand, you know, what, what was happening.
So. I started to realize that the legacy of the plantation as a workplace still really existed, inside of our workplaces. And it's easy to blame this. It's easy to sort of blame corporate America, right? To think that corporate America is the only place where we see this, but that's not true. I have worked in nonprofit.
I worked in big nonprofit. I worked in small nonprofit and I've seen it. I've worked in small business. I've seen it. I've worked in government. I've seen it. I've worked in education and I've seen it. So we see it [00:37:00] everywhere. It's not just a, it's not just a corporate thing. So I began to. Now look at operations, right?
So I've shifted from sort of general business strategy into operations. So now I start to look at operations through this lens of colonialism. And you know, once I did that, I could see it everywhere. I could see all kinds of evidence of these very harmful practices. That I know, right, came from
Speaker 3: the
Podge: slave industry.
They came from the plantation as a workplace, right? Lots of power at the top, absolutely no power at the bottom. And, you know, I don't, I don't want to be too dramatic about it, right? we don't enslave people anymore and people get paid for work now, right? Like, that's true, [00:38:00] right? We've definitely made some progress, but the legacy is still there.
And so that's what I became very curious about was how can I, how can I do this work with the right people and Introduce the idea of, and you know, it's oftentimes in the work that I do, it's oftentimes not explicit, right? I'm not asking. And so where do you see, you know, colonialism showing up? It's not like that, but we do start to just look at all these different pieces of business, especially where, when it comes to Working with people.
I'm not talking about clients, right? We always revere our clients, right? We give our clients the best possible experience we can get because they're paying us,
Speaker 5: but
Podge: we don't do that for the people who work with us and for us. So that, that's really where [00:39:00] this history of colonization led me, right? It led me to understanding this reality, which is, That the legacy of the plantation, it lives and thrives in, in our workplaces.
Nicole: Yeah. So what does that look like? Like, do any examples come to mind of what that looks like in our workplace now?
Podge: Yeah. I mean, hiring is a really good example of this.
Nicole: Right,
Podge: where if you're looking for a job, you have no power. You're all, it's already a bad situation, right? If you're looking for a job, maybe you already have a job that you want to leave because it's not working out for you and, and, and the chances that it's not working out for you because it's It feels really crappy to work there, pretty high, right?
People sometimes leave jobs for something better, right? They're looking for a promotion elsewhere, but a lot of people leave the job because it's just, it's just a really [00:40:00] shitty place to be. So we're looking for a job. We're in A place of perhaps desperation, we're certainly in a place of need and insecurity, right?
We need to keep the money coming in so we can support our families. We can pay the bills, right? There's lots of different reasons, lots of different situations we can imagine here. So you know, we go onto Indeed you know, or LinkedIn or wherever it is, people find jobs these days. I don't know. I haven't looked for a job in years, right?
I'm just kidding. I know that this is where you go. So, yeah. And what do you see? So you're going to see a job description. It might be about a thousand words. It's going to be really long. It's going to be kind of opaque. It's not really going to be super clear exactly what the job is. It kind of looks like maybe two or three people's work that they're asking you to do. And it's often written in
sort of [00:41:00] Somewhat complex language, I don't know why I don't know why it is we can't speak plainly in documentation. I think we still feel like I think something needs to sound highbrow and something can certainly sound sophisticated, but still be plain. So it's sometimes can be hard to understand. Right?
Exactly. What do you really mean here? And that's just right. And we just got as far as the job description. So now we try to understand, well, what is the compensation? It's possible that there's some transparency there. There might be a range. I've seen very big ranges. I've seen this job pays from, you know, 50 to 75, 000 a year.
That's a big range. There's no explanation of how you might qualify. To be in a particular part of that range, it's not really, that's not, that's not transparent at all, right? That's, that's, that's not very clear. And that's even if we get that, right? And now we're supposed to apply for the job, you know, I have to send in my resume, maybe [00:42:00] write a cover letter.
I have no idea, nine times out of ten, when you plan to apply. On hiring.
Nicole: Mm-Hmm. .
Podge: I don't know what the interview process is. I don't know. If, is there a phone screener? Do I have to come in for an interview? Who am I going to be interviewing with? When will you be making a decision? How many rounds are there?
I don't have any of that information and I'm not expecting it either. Yeah. 'cause this is how I, this is how it is. And on the flip side is the employer. You don't think there's anything wrong with doing it that way. Everyone else is. Everybody else is doing it. But when you look at it, you can see all the power is concentrated with the employer.
The employee has very, very little say or, you know, power over this. It's kind of a crapshoot. And for why? There isn't, there isn't really a good [00:43:00] reason. I have come across situations where. Somebody has been applying for multiple jobs and there's this one job that they interviewed with and they think it went really well, but they haven't heard anything.
And now they've got an offer over here and it's not as an it's not as exciting of an opportunity. But if I don't take it. Then I don't have a new job, but I really want this one over here, but I have no idea what's, I don't know what they're doing or what's happening. And the truth is that they often don't know themselves.
You might email them and say, Hey, do you have a timeline? You know, I've been offered another job and I'd like to sort of weigh my options. Well, that's sort of seen as cheeky, right? So maybe, but maybe you do that. But the chances are this other company, they don't know what they're doing either. And there's just no real.
There's no real good reason to, to do that. And in fact, if you were to disclose a lot more information in that process, in that hiring process, you'd probably get better [00:44:00] candidates. Yeah. And you'd probably have a better experience because your new employee, whoever that person is, they meet you for the first time when they read that job description.
They don't meet you when they go to your website, they don't meet you, you know, at the interview, they don't meet you at the phone screener. They meet you when they read the job description. So what kind of experience do you want that person who's going to be working for you to have? Because what I know about human relationships is that I am more likely to show up and bring my best self.
If I trust you. And so let's say I jumped through all of these hoops. I've submitted my resume and a cover letter. I got a phone screener, had an interview. I had another interview with a panel. I've been offered the job. I've negotiated the [00:45:00] salary that I want. And now here I am on day one. And you've already kind of treated me like shit and I already kind of don't trust you.
Nicole: Yeah. And
Podge: that's and that's how you start their relationship.
Nicole: Yeah. Wow. What an awful beginning we have. That's, yeah, the way the system is now, it seems like the main goal is to maintain power over, right? Like the main goal is to keep the cloud of mystery so that you can make last minute changes.
Like you haven't promised anything yet. You give this big salary range so that when you decide, Oh, we can only pay them 52, not that not close to that 75. Like, well, that's, that was in the range we included.
Podge: Yep.
Nicole: Like it seems almost like, like in dating, it's a way to keep your options open so that like, you, you don't like, you don't have to commit, and yeah, that damages trust immediately.
And I think contributes so greatly to our, the [00:46:00] whole like culture of distrust in, in the workplace.
Podge: And I love that you brought up this, this analogy of dating because I use this analogy all the time. It's been a while since I dated cause I've been with my partner for almost 14 years. So it's been a minute. But if I was to go back out there
and date and I'm grown, so I'm not the 20 year old asshole dating person that I was, right? So I'm grown, I know a little bit better. Yeah. But I am thinking about that, that person that I might be going out on a date with tonight. That, that could be a person that I end up in a relationship with for multiple years or maybe even for the rest of my life.
So how do I want to treat them from the beginning? Right. How do I want to nurture that relationship? And also, I have to be [00:47:00] careful that The person who I meet, the person who maybe I fall in love with, the person who I, you know, run around the countryside with for the first six months, is not the same person I'm going to know at year one or at year three.
Or here I am going into my 14th year with my partner and I, I'm still learning things about her. And I think employee, employers make the same mistake. The person who you interview is probably not going to be the same person that you start to really get to know and see at six months or a year in.
Speaker 4: And
Podge: we have to, as, as employers, we have to really, we have to see that coming.
Right. You don't want to wake up one day and go, this isn't the person who I interviewed. Well, of course, it isn't the person that you interviewed. The person that you interviewed needed the job and so they made, they made [00:48:00] themselves seem as enticing and as attractive as possible under the circumstances that you presented them with.
Nicole: Yeah, that's the other thing I was thinking as you were describing, like the job description is it, it encourages pretending when it wants you to, to be. I'm taking that
Podge: language. That's fantastic. It encourages pretending. It absolutely encourages pretending. And by the way, if you're out there, if you're listening to this and you're out there looking for a job, don't think that they're not pretending either.
That, that, that company, they are pretending. They are definitely pretending. Everybody's pretending. And there's an inevitability to some of that, right? Like it's just, it's normal. But we can mitigate a lot of those pieces. And, you know, I mentioned earlier, I'm not always prescriptive about, you know, how to re rethink and re imagine systems.
But I'm fairly prescriptive about the hiring process and sometimes clients will hire me to hire for [00:49:00] them. So. The job description is very concise. It's very realistic. We focus in on three to five areas of responsibility because you don't want to put in a laundry list of all of the duties that somebody is responsible for.
It's much better to explain the areas of responsibility. This is what you're going to be responsible for. This is what you'll be in charge of. So it really makes things a lot more simple. We determine the best possible hourly rate or salary that the business can sustain and be able to get the most competitive candidate.
And we publish that right on the job description. And we let people know on the phone screener This is the rate, this is the maximum amount that the business can sustain. Does this rate work for you? Because when we get to the end of the hiring process, and if we offer the, this job to you, we don't negotiate the [00:50:00] salary at a later date.
This is the salary.
Speaker 5: And
Podge: these are the reasons for picking that salary, because this is the maximum amount that the business can sustain and still find, be able to find a competitive candidate. So is that okay? So we do that. We also add into the job description, a timeline and a detailed description of what the hiring process looks like.
So it takes about three months to hire. It's about 20 to 40 hours, depending on the size of your company. So it's expensive and you want to make sure that you've got time for it. Right. It takes about three months. So here, you know, this date to this date will be, will be accepting applications and then that closes.
And then from this date to this date, we're going to call you to do a phone screen, a 20, 30 minute conversation, just to kind of answer the basic questions, talk a little bit about the job at a high level, just to make sure, you know, is this, is this worth pursuing for both of us? And then from this date to this date, we have an initial interview and you'll be interviewing with this [00:51:00] particular person, right?
You can name them or you can. Just publish whatever the role is, if this is the hire, you'll be meeting with the hiring manager interview round two, you'll be meeting with a panel and on the panel will be these people and, you know, maybe you do some sort of an assessment or, you know, a practice day, something like that.
You publish all of that and the timeline for it and then the proposed start date is this. It's really simple and it doesn't hurt anyone.
Nicole: Yeah. But I think a lot of people, like there is something vulnerable because it, it does kind of indicate a promise. Like a commitment to, like, if you say you're going to, if you say you're going to reply, whether they got the job or not, then you, you got to follow through on it.
And I think that that's probably why some companies are afraid to do it. Right. They don't want to promise any kind of behavior or response
Podge: and I think sometimes it's a fear of. The, a fear of missing, of, of missing the mark. It's, it's a bit of a perfectionism, right? Cause I've definitely [00:52:00] had to change the timeline.
So then I will just email all of the candidates have applied and say, I'm, I'm terribly sorry. Right. Something came up, we've shifted the timeline. Here's the new timeline. It's not that hard. Sometimes, especially for my clients who might be hiring for a role that we anticipate getting a lot of applications for, we'll add to the job description.
If you don't hear from us by this date. It's because you haven't moved to the next round. And the reason why we're not reaching out to you personally is that we anticipate a lot of applications and we just don't have the time or the resources to be able to reach out to everybody individually. We appreciate that you applied and you know.
That, that this is what you can expect. It's really about managing expectation and it's okay to go back and say, you know, I'm sorry, we kind of, we were a little bit optimistic about this. And so we have to shift it.
It's no harm, no foul, right? Rather, I'd rather do that than make people go in blind. [00:53:00]
Nicole: Yeah.
Well, people don't like the unknown. We're afraid of the unknown. It's so that's already setting up on a bad foot. So giving some sort of clarity, I think is very kind.
Podge: Yeah. And it just, it's just,
Nicole: It makes sense, right? It doesn't, it doesn't really
Podge: cost
Nicole: anything. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my goodness. We've, we've reached the end of the hour and I want to respect your time because I know you're working on your website and you've got, you've got so much going on over there.
I feel like I could talk to you for like another two hours about this though. , but let's, let's go ahead and wrap up. So Podge, for people listening who might want to work with you on some of this stuff or work with you on Notion. Oh, we didn't even get to geek out on Notion. Notion is so amazing.
I can see, I just want to say, I can see how it's the perfect tool for you because like when you talk about the world building and Building the structure that works for the company and then like building the systems within that structure like Asana or none of the tools that exist with the like [00:54:00] predetermined structures can do that.
Like Notion is the tool for that, right? Yeah,
Podge: that's right. Asana doesn't really do it. Trello doesn't really do it, but Notion, and you know, that's, I want to just be clear, Notion is not the answer to all of your prayers, right? And it's not for everybody, but it can, it is a very powerful tool. Yeah. And it's too bad we didn't get to talk about that.
Too, too much. But if you're listening to this and you don't know what Notion is go check it out.
Nicole: Yeah. And Podge has a bunch of tools. I signed, I just signed up for one of your guides last night. It was a, oh, shoot, which one was it? I think it
Podge: was the the The service, the service guide. Yeah.
That was a collaboration that I did with Lisa Greer. Yeah. That was really fun. Yeah. Yeah.
Nicole: I was looking at it today. I was like, wow, this is a super well organized motion template. I love it. Yeah. No, it's, it's genius. Okay. Paj, if people want to learn more about you or work with you or get one of the guides that I was just talking about, where should they go?
Podge: So if you want to reach out to me, you can find me at smallbusinesscopilot. [00:55:00] com or smallbusinesscopilot. io. Either of those will get you to the same place. Like you mentioned, the site is under construction at the moment, so You know, give me a minute. I'll be right back. Hopefully it's possible by the time this as it will actually be live.
So that's where you can find me. You can reach out to me there. You can also email me directly at podgettsmallbusinesscopilot. com and you can go to podge. gumroad. com and you can find all of my digital products there. And I do have a digital product that I created. It's a notion template. That anybody can have for free.
And it's called what is it called? It's called the employee stewardship guide. And if you go onto podge. gumrover. com, I highly recommend grabbing that template because it's kind of like a mini course and it takes you through the. The four pillars of employee stewardship, which is hiring, [00:56:00] onboarding, managing, and separating.
And it can start to give you a sense of how to create those systems for yourself in your business through a lens of decolonization.
Nicole: Oh, I love that. I'm going to go sign up for that now. Yeah. And this episode will be out, I think, June 27th. So website will be out?
Podge: It will definitely be done by then.
It's supposed to be done by Monday. Yikes. That's what I promised on my newsletter that went out this morning. And I am leaving for England this weekend. So we'll see. But yes, it will definitely be done by the 27th.
Nicole: Okay. Awesome. All right. So we'll include all those links in the show notes and thank you so much Podge for your time today and for coming on.
I really appreciate you.
Podge: Thank you so much, Nicole. Thank you for having me. This was great.
Nicole: All right, everyone. I'll see you next time.