The Leadership & Managerial Excellence (LME) Interest Group (IG), based on the concepts of quality, continuous improvement and quality management, was the brainchild of John Pryor, CPCU, ARM, AAI, AIS.
Pryor was chairman of the CPCU Society's Continuing Education (CE) Committee from 1994 to1996, and our CE agenda at that time focused on quality management issues and opportunities. The CE Committee recommended creation of an interest group focused exclusively on what was then called total quality management (now Lean Six Sigma in most instances). The Society's board approved the proposal, and we were off and running! Pryor chaired this new IG, which addressed issues focused not only on the voice of the customer, continuous process improvement and other elements of quality management, but also leadership and excellence, elements of the interest group's current name.
Pryor served as LME IG chairman until 2000. To expand the brand and concepts of quality, continuous improvement and leadership and how they relate to all areas of the insurance industry, the group’s name was changed from Total Quality (TQ) to Leadership and Managerial Excellence (LME) in 2008.
The need for the practice of quality management in the context of leadership and excellence is ongoing and is only gaining in importance for the successful and profitable operation of any organization—whether a carrier, a broker or a TPA within the insurance business—or in any other for-profit, not-for-profit or public entity.
The Institutes' AIS 25 (Delivering Insurance Services) course was introduced in 1994 and is based on a textbook of the same name originally written by Dr. Warren T. Hope. This text applied the quality management principles of Dr. W. Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran and Philip B. Crosby to insurance organizations. Crosby, at the time, was part of the ITT-Hartford Insurance Group.
We are pleased to note that some Society members’ names are included among those on a contributors page in the current edition of The Institutes’ Delivering Insurance Services book—those who served on the initial advisory committee and who reviewed the textbook manuscript before it was published. They are Howard Candage, Frank Herberg, Neil Mahoney, John Pryor, Jo Conway Roberts and William Weld.