Our History

2001 Baldrige Award Ceremony

McClaskey Excellence Institute started from, is based on, and instills in its customers the use of role model practices in operations excellence. The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. to any for-profit or not-for-profit organization. It recognizes a company as a national role model in both its processes and sustained business results. Pal’s Sudden Service earned the award as the first food service operation to be so honored in 2001. David McClaskey, a performance excellence consultant and Baldrige Expert with over 25 years consulting experience at the time was Pal’s Baldrige consultant when they won the Award in 2001. He has helped seven companies win eight Baldrige Awards.

In 2000, Thom Crosby, Pal’s CEO, and David McClaskey formed Pal’s Business Excellence Institute to inspire, enable, and support leaders outside of Pal’s to create extraordinary organizations using operations excellence. This was a systematic way to do a quality job of sharing role model practices, which is one of the main objectives that the U.S. established the Baldrige Award. Based on David McClaskey’s extensive experience with Pal’s, other Baldrige winners, and other role model companies, David created the material that was taught by Pal’s BEI.

The First 20 years

In the 20 years of Pal’s BEI existence, the material taught was refined and improved based on the experience with tens of thousands of leaders who attended the Institute’s classes and conference presentations.

The Institute is designed to not only share role model practices, but to have participants use the practices within their own companies. It is the benchmark in the area of on-the-job application. 100% of all organizations use one or more concepts they learned during the Institute’s classes.

Current: McClaskey Excellence Institute

In January 2020, because of the growth of the Institute, Pal’s BEI became an independent organization and was re-branded McClaskey Excellence Institute. The re-branded institute has the same mission to inspire, enable, and support leaders to create extraordinary organizations using operations excellence. We will continue to fulfill that mission as an independent company. We are a key partner in organizations going from ordinary to extraordinary. Every type of organization and every level of leader has found great value in our Institute’s classes, coaching, consulting, and presentations.

Everything McClaskey Excellence Institute teaches is based on proven practices of role model companies that lead to operations excellence.

The class you attend will contain our best knowledge on role model practices and implementation of operations excellence. It is kept current because David continues to develop and refine the material based on study of role model practices, attendee learning and feedback, and on-the-job implementation by attendees.