Mark Watson

In the past few weeks I haven’t updated the blog and have left few tweets on my twitter account.  The reason for my silence has been due to my work schedule.

As you may recall I spent most of last year in upstate New York doing a corporate re-structure.  This spring and summer is the second half of the re-structure which will put me in Batesville, Mississippi.

A typical day begins with meetings at 6:40 AM with several more throughout the day.  It finally concludes about 6:30 in the evening.  After that my team and I go to the hotel to freshen up and then out for a quick dinner.  As you can see, this leaves little time for blogging or twittering. 

In spite of my schedule, both Stacie and I are keeping up on or readings and will continue to post as we can.  She is going to catch us up on the last couple of weeks and hopefully I can pick up on the next one.

As you can probably guess, I’m not that crazy about my job right now.  Not just for the above reason but several more better left un-said.

Prayers would be appreciated.

I just finished reading the book De-Railed by Tim Irwin, Ph.D.  My thoughts through the early part of the book were “Ouch!  This is cruel!”  The critical review of six failed CEO’s seemed brutal at times. 

Being in leadership most of my life, I’ve never had to look far to find critics no matter what my results or methods.  But, as I continued to read the lessons learned from each CEO, I began to think how this could apply to some of my managers or CEO’s under which I had previously served.  I kept thinking,  “how could I get (insert name here) to read this book.  Maybe they would see the error of their ways and change.”

By the end of the book, I realized that all these potentials for derailment were me!  It had nothing to do with my boss or my CEO.  It was about what I needed to do to prevent the possibility of being ”De-Railed.”

I was still pretty confident in myself even though I knew this applied to me.  I felt sure once I took the free on-line assessment that  I would have little if anything to work on.  But to be sure, I took the assessment.  The results of the assessment made the book personal.  I have work to do.

It is my intention to share my results with a select few and give this book to my whole staff.  My biggest regret is not having access to something like this available earlier in my career.

De-Railed is a must read for anyone in leadership or aspiring to leadership.  It is NOT a business book.  It is a leadership book.  When you finish – take the assessment and take actions to stay on track!

Looks like I’ll be taking my running on the road for the next few months.  Due to some restructuring I will be working at our Lyons, New York facility.  Not a bad place to be during the Memphis heat.

I usually stay in Geneva at the Ramada by Seneca Lake.  It gives me a great place to run in the morning before I go to work.  Below was my running view last Friday morning. 

http://www.johnmarkwatson.com/

Lake Run