When Richard Lee needed cash to get his business off the ground, he approached a banker.
He said that he and a group of fellow scientists were starting a company and he wanted to borrow money against farmland he owned in North Dakota to get it started.
The banker, not convinced that a bunch of former U.S. Steel research scientists had the savvy to run a business, greeted Lee’s request with more than a little skepticism.
“I said, ‘Well, it seems to me that what we are are problem-solvers, and I cannot understand the difference between solving a problem and running a business, and solving a technical problem or a production problem,” says Lee.
Two decades later, Lee and his company are still making those kinds of connections and making them work. His knack for seeing relationships that others might not grasp at first and instilling the same spirit in his employees has contributed mightily to the success of R.J. Lee Group, a 287-employee company that posted a 43 percent growth in sales over the three-year period ending in 2004.
Lee, trained as a theoretical physicist, traces the inspiration for his approach to a scientist he worked with at U.S. Steel. A senior research scientist, the man seemed to make effortless connections between elements and factors that Lee often found unrelated at first.
That skill, says Lee, is every bit as applicable in a business environment as it is in a scientific research setting.
“I was so impressed when I saw him sit down and apply his general kinds of concepts to the next problem that didn’t look anything like the last problem to me,” Lee says. “It’s a process of integration and is, without a doubt, applicable for every manager, certainly in every business, and is a differentiator.”
