PERSONALLY SPEAKING •Position:
How do we find good people?
It was a common question asked of Lyn Watson over the years she conducted executive retreats and other corporate training for Strata Leadership LLC.
Companies appreciated the sessions to help their workers become more efficient and effective, but wanted Watson and her colleagues to help them hire right in the first place.
Through Strata’s recent acquisition of Principal Technologies Inc. staffing firm, Watson is excited about doing just that.
“Our goal is to offer a different way of recruiting, including asking character questions in interviews, versus simply sending resumes on to employers like many staffing companies do,” said Watson, who became president of Principal Technologies on Jan. 1.
Founded in 1998, the firm provides temporary and permanent placement of information technology, engineering, accounting and human resources professionals. It employs roughly 100, including its temporary contract workers.
Watson, 50, sat down with The Oklahoman to talk about her life and career, including her stint on the Oklahoma City Public Schools Board of Education and treatment for breast cancer. For her recent five-year anniversary as a cancer survivor, colleagues, family and friends flooded her second-floor office at 11600 Broadway Extension with pink balloons, pink streamers and pink roses. This is an edited transcript of the interview:
Q: Tell us about your roots.
A:
I grew up in Lawton as a Screamin’ Eagle at Eisenhower High School, with a brother two years older who’s now a lobbyist in D.C. Our father was a Methodist minister and mother, a fifth-grade teacher-turned-administrator who started the gifted and talented program in Lawton and later worked in school public relations there and in Norman where she retired. In elementary school, I took piano, played basketball and sang. In the sixth grade, I was the state 4-H champion in singing. In junior high, I gave up singing for cheerleading, and was student council president. In high school, I was a pom-pom girl (I couldn’t be a cheerleader because I couldn’t do a back handspring.) and student body president. When I was 16, my father, who’s now deceased, left us; remarried six months later; and basically disowned us. That was traumatic, but it turned out to be a blessing because I became best friends with my mom, who went on to earn her master’s and became a strong female role model for me. A good student, I was awarded a full scholarship to Cameron University, but my mom insisted I was going to OU, though I had to pay my own way through Pell grants, scholarships and working several jobs. Her girlfriends made sure I went through sorority rush. I pledged Kappa Kappa Gamma. My plan was to become a dentist, until I failed chemistry and calculus. When I followed my strengths — to journalism and PR — I made straight As.
Q: How’d you meet your
co-owner
Principal Technologies, president and
University of Oklahoma, bachelor’s in journalism/public relations
Brad, telecom executive and husband of 26 years; Emily, 21, a junior at Oklahoma State University, and Ben, 18, a senior at Oklahoma Christian School
An avid reader of nonfiction (including Bible journaling, “Good to Great” by Jim Collins and “Start with Why” by Simon Sinek), she plays right field on a coed softball team with her son Monday nights and eats pizza and watches recorded “Survivor” episodes with her family every Wednesday night, after church activities.
I grew up in Lawton with a Brad Watson, who pledged Sig Ep fraternity at OU, where my husband — Brad Watson, who’s four years older — was also a member. One of my summer jobs during college was working as a lifeguard in Lawton for the Brad Watson of Lawton. Then, after I graduated OU, the other Brad Watson — upon the recommendation of his Lawton fraternity brother, Brad Watson — hired me as a sales rep at DataTimes, an Oklahoma City-based company that digitized newspapers nationwide. I turned down a job at The Oklahoman because I couldn’t afford to pay for an apartment. During my senior year in college, I’d worked the 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift there, handling births and obits. I loved working in sales at DataTimes. My two big accounts were the The Chicago Sun-Times and The Star Tribune in Minnesota. I’d set up appointments one week and then travel the next, calling on surrounding law firms, advertising agencies and others who needed digitized copies of those newspapers for research. Brad and I, who had a manager in between us, didn’t start dating until the second year of my nine years with the company. We dated secretly for six months until we felt we had to tell the president we were dating. He was totally OK with it, as long as we were professional, which we were. Many of our co-workers were surprised to learn we were a couple. We married in 1990. When I left DataTimes, after it was acquired by a Michigan company, Brad already had moved into the telecom industry.
July 19, 1965/Lawton
Q: How’d you get into training?
A:
My personal mantra is “bloom where you’re planted.” The last several years with DataTimes, I built the company’s customer service department, handled on-boarding of new employees and conducted seminars nationwide. When I left, I did contract training work and then Dobson Communications hired me as its first trainer. Then, I was approached to start a staffing company in Oklahoma City. For four years, I taught people how to sell for Hire Sales. I sold my portion of the company to my partners in 2001 — and at the urging of my husband — took a full year off to just be a mom to our daughter and son, who were 7 and 4. I’d served on some eight boards, including being president of the local chapter of the American Marketing Association and a 15-year active member of Junior League. But I left all that too, to be a homeroom mom and PTA volunteer. I realized that my priorities were off. I was serving everybody else but my own people. When I resumed my contract training work a year later, I worked only 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., so that I could take my kids to school and pick them up. Then, six years later, I quit paid work again to run for a seat on the Oklahoma City School Board, on which I served from 2009 to 2013 as District 1 representative. I easily spent 20 hours a week on the job, attending committee meetings, visiting schools and fulfilling other responsibilities. My impetus to serve was improving the new John Marshall High School for which I’d started a task force. It was Kirk Humphreys who approached me to run for the board seat.
Q: How’d you meet your current business partners, Nathan Mellor and Frank Smith?
A:
I was in the first Salt & Light Leadership Training class in 2009, and Nathan and Frank contracted me afterward to help them with training. A few years later, I asked their opinion on a business I was considering buying, and they instead convinced me to come to work full-time for them. Strata since bought the Character First program from Tom Hill at Kimray, which gives us an international presence. The program focuses on fostering and rewarding workers for 36 character qualities — from attentiveness and cooperation to thoroughness and wisdom. For companies to thrive, they have to develop a culture of respect and trust, and reward employees for their initiative throughout the process, and not just the sale or outcome. Through our newsletters, training, coaching and magazines, we — every month — are reaching 850,000 people across 25 countries.
Q: That must’ve been scary when you learned you had breast cancer. How were you diagnosed?
A:
At age 16, my daughter found a lump on her breast. We had an ultrasound and biopsy, and it was negative. Praise, Jesus! Then, three months later, on April 1, I went for my annual checkup and had a lump that they biopsied. I was at a trade show when I received a call that I had breast cancer. It was only stage 1 but an aggressive cancer, so I had an immediate lumpectomy and, after I healed, radiation a few months later. The following fall, I had my ovaries removed because the kind of cancer that I had commonly spreads to them. My cancer diagnosis quickly changed my perspective on life. I was working on paint colors for the walls of the home we’d recently bought in Quail Creek, and realized paint colors don’t matter. A year later, I had a scare when I found a lump on my other breast and had a lumpectomy on it, though it turned out to be benign. I laughed that God knows I like symmetry. All is good.