Everyone who’s taken Quality 101 has heard of W. Edwards Deming, the American statistician known for improving industrial production in the United States during World War II and playing a key role in Japan’s post war industrial redevelopment. Those experiences led him to develop an incredible set of management theories known as Profound Knowledge.

Deming’s ideas emerged from his experiences as a boy growing up on the Wyoming frontier in the early 1900s. He observed the benefits of cooperation amongst the farmers and continual improvement of farming practices taught by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Later he would remind students the West was won by townspeople working together at barn-raisings and quilting bees… not by loner cowboys.

Here at Fort Ashford Funds, we believe to thrive, a company must create an environment with a spirit of cooperation and camaraderie – a community in which people pursue continual improvement of themselves and the various business processes they follow for the greater good of the organization. Motivation should come from within, from caring not fearing.

“Long-term commitment to new learning and new philosophy is required of any management that seeks transformation. The timid and the fainthearted, and the people that expect quick results, are doomed to disappointment.” From Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming.

Management’s role is to develop accurate predictions and guide and manage a business to ensure the future of the organization and its stakeholders. Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge provides management with the vision and tools for transforming and developing businesses seeking a long-term competitive advantage.

At Fort Ashford, we embrace Deming’s ideas, in theory and practice, and seek to practice and develop our understanding of how they can be combined with the best and brightest new ideas for the insurance and risk-related marketplaces. We feel communicating our vision and educating our partners on the principles that drive our practices is key to our mutual success.

Over the coming weeks and months, I will be posting regularly to this blog to introduce readers to my understanding of Deming’s principles, their practical application in business and private equity funding, and how they have and continue to evolve in my mind influenced by my exposure to other ideas as well as my own management experiences, observations, and insights.

I invite you to join me on this journey of discovery and evolution as we explore and test my understandings, reveal opportunities that arise out of honest examination, and identify other resources that were helpful in my own personal and professional development.

I also encourage you to post your own observations, insights, and commentary in the form of comments to assist in forming what I hope becomes a collaborative community from which the best business management principles and practices are born.