 Sometimes sisterly leadership can have advantages over the men¡¯s point of view. Lee Sook-young, 42, is one who has proved that a woman can become a big sister and effective boss to 470 male engineers, who are her subordinates. Ever since Lee joined the software firm LG CNS in 1984 and worked her way up to vice president, stories about her promotion were always bannered by headlines such as: ¡°The first woman in an IT conglomerate to become¡¦¡±
She became vice president in 2001, drawing much attention as the first and youngest female senior managing director to reach that level in the local information technology industry, in the field of systems integration in particular.
¡°The number of women in the IT industry was small in the early years," Lee said. "But these days many women have reached the team-leader level, and in a couple of years the promotion of women executives will be common.¡±
Lee said that a woman¡¯s biggest advantage in the workplace was the ability to handle delicate human resources management and quality control. ¡°Some of my workers call me ¡®sister¡¯and ask for advice,¡± she said.
Lee¡¯s outstanding performance has resulted in outstanding technical achievements for LG CNS. The company received a top grade from the Capability Maturity Model for Software, an international model for judging the maturity of company's software processes, and has dropped its failure rate to almost 0 percent.
Despite her success, though, Lee said that she also had difficult times after her promotion. For instance, at the time vice presidents were generally expected to play golf with their business partners - but Lee said she was still a novice at the game.
Lee also said that today's organization atmosphere guarantees women ¡°equality,¡± and that she hoped more women would follow in her footsteps in selecting one field and putting everything into their work.
(Baik Seung-jae, whitesj@chosun.com )
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