▲ Lee Yong Tae Work & Success Lab / Director Yongtae Lee

Most people work hard to get a job. When they have got a job, they work even harder to make a success in the workplace. Many of them invest their time in self learning and development. It is encouraging that the South Korea’s recent 52 hour work week policy enables them to do this. As competition gets more and more heated up to get the best seat possible, they play colleague and enemy at the same time and they tend not to share their secrets. Yongtae Lee, Director of the Lee Yong Tae Work & Success Lab, knows this very well and he is giving useful tips instead and on behalf as a companion. 

Extensive quality management experience in global IT companies

Lee got a job at SK Hynix in 1987. For the next 29 years, he built extensive quality management experiences with regular engagement with well known global IT companies. He was the one who first introduced a quality management system in SK Hynix and contributed to raising quality competitiveness to the level of global standard. 

He joined a joint project to establish a corporate body of SK Hynix in China and proved his ability to complete a quality management system within a short period of time. 

After decades of his services for SK Hynix, he quit and opened Lee Yong Tae Work & Success Lab with a goal to deliver his knowhow and experience in quality management to many people who wish to make a success in work especially for small and medium sized work places. 

First 3 years of workplace decides your career thereafter!

Lee remembers back to early years of his job at SK Hynix. He was willing to make contribution to localizing electronic components but he was busy catching up the work he had to do. 

“Neither my senior colleagues nor my boss gave me clear answers whenever I asked questions. I thought I had someone who could guide me one by one and step by step. I understand them because they had their own work loads. So I learned the work by myself. But I started brewing a thought that one day I wish I could help all novice workers like me.”

While carrying out his work, he also focused on building a quality management system which he did indeed. He also was credited for building a cooperative work channel home and abroad for the first time among semiconductor companies in South Korea. 

“One thing I came to realize was that you must learn the core elements of your work within the first 3 years of your new job. But at the same time, you have to do this with a vision for the next 10 years.”

Writing books for small and medium companies

 When Lee was in charge of quality management for affiliated companies, he was shocked by poor systems and lost himself where to start. This was the period he started another brewing of thought to write books for small and medium companies. 

He has written a total of 9 books including 2 self development books. Some to name are: Company Wants Like This Person, Work & Study, Power of Writing A Book, Heydays of Peculiars, and My Life Changed After Writing A Book.

“Apart from quality management consulting, I would like to give tips to one man startups on how to do business with a small capital.”

From 2018, Lee has been training interns at SK Hynix and lecturing students at Chungwoon University.