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July 2010 Pal’s BEI Alumni
September 1, 2010 by Clay Rolston

Congratulations to the Regional Eye Center, Kingsport, TN for completing a custom workshop on Achieving World-Class Results July 25-26, 2010.

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June 2010 Pal’s BEI Alumni
August 12, 2010 by Clay Rolston

June 2010 Achieving World-Class Results Class

Congratulations to our most recent Pal’s BEI Alumni who completed the Achieving World-Class Results training on June 21-22, 2010. The participants from left to right (more…)

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Thom Crosby on Information Technology
May 26, 2010 by Clay Rolston

At the May 6, 2010 Pal’s Business Excellence Institute training class – Achieving World-Class Resutls – Thom Crosby answers questions about Pal’s Sudden Service approach to using information technology. (more…)

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New Pal’s BEI Alumni
May 13, 2010 by Clay Rolston

May 2010 Achieving World-Class Results Class

Congratulations to our most recent Pal’s BEI Alumni who completed the Achieving World-Class Results training on May 7, 2010. The participants from left to right are Chris Comeaux (Four Seasons), Anthony Melo (Foster Farms), Mark Landouw (El Pollo Loco), Jesse Larios (El Pollo Loco), Sarah Pope (Piggy Bank Express), Thom Crosby (Pal’s), David McClaskey (Pal’s BEI), Nalini Pillay (A&W), Ken Walker (Foster Farms), Leslie Fletcher (Holston Medical Group), Chandris Equivel (A&W), Shawna Armstrong (Holston Medical Group), Ibby Whitten (Four Seasons). We were thrilled to have such a geographically diverse group. (more…)

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Pal’s BEI Featured on the Kingsport TN ChamberZone
April 30, 2010 by Clay Rolston
Recently the Kingsport Chamber of Commerce featured Pal’s Business Excellence Institute on the March 2010 ChamberZone Link to Video. Thom Crosby (CEO, Pal’s Sudden Service) and Clay Rolston (Marketing Director, Pal’s BEI) talk about (more…)

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Pal’s BEI Client wins Texas Quality Award
April 1, 2010 by Clay Rolston
Pal’s Business Excellence Institute extends our congratulations to K&N Management (Mighty Fine Burgers/Rudy’s BBQ Austin) on receiving the 2010 Texas Award for Performance Excellence (press release). According the recent QSR article K&N Management Earns Texas TAPE Award they are the first restaurant group to win the states highest recognition for quality.

David McClaskey, President – Pal’s Business Excellence Institute, states that “I have been very impressed with how K&N (more…)

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Pal’s BEI and Prestera to Present at NIATx Summit and SAAS National Conference
March 9, 2010 by Clay Rolston
2010 NIATx Summit and SAAS National Conference at Duke Energy Convention Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, July 11-14

Title: How to Get and Keep Productive People: A Prestera Center Improvement Case StudyImplemented based on best practices learned from attending a session at the 2008 SAAS National Conference and NIATx Summit

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Thom Crosby Talks: Process Management
February 24, 2010 by Clay Rolston
First Be Effective, Then Efficient

At Pal’s, we carefully design our products and services and continually analyze our delivery processes. We have created a business model in which our bright and capable leaders and managers are on the front line directly interacting with customers and team members, driving results and being personally rewarded.

These and other measures ensure that our operations meet customer expectations each and every time a customer is served. Standardization is a critical factor in achieving this.

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American Greeting Wraps Up Success with Pal’s BEI
by Clay Rolston
When plant manager, Scott Crawford, sped into the American Greetings (AG) warehouse in a Bristol Motor Speedway pace car, the crowd of associates assembled there strongly suspected that the workday would not be business as usual, and they were right. This event marked the day that employees of the largest printing and converting facility for gift wrap in the world would declare a race to beat their own records, that of their competitors, and, in the process, win the battle against outsourcing. As he stood in the amazed crowd of over 700 associates, Jon Reynolds, traffic manager in the material movement department, observed that in his 14 years at the plant he had never attended a gathering of the entire workforce and he knew that this was also a first for people who had been employed there much longer. “I think that our plant had never tried to work on a common goal,” agreed Scott Felts, production department manager, “This brought everybody together.” The day, April 16, 2007, marked the grand kickoff to the Greeneville 200, a 200 day Racing Event that was designed with a lot of sweat equity and brainpower from a devoted steering team . . . yet it was only the beginning.

“It’s always Christmas here,” says Reynolds, describing the AG plant in Greeneville, Tennessee. In fact, hourly associates work from seven to nine months out of the year in this seasonal plant, printing, converting, and packaging millions of rolls of Christmas wrapping paper annually! So how did the manufacturers of a product that makes gifts festive for people around the globe come to gather at a stage decorated with a NASCAR race theme? It began when several managers attended a workshop called Accelerated Continuous Improvement (ACI) taught by Russell Justice, a specialist in applying quality management and positive behavioral principles in the workplace. Justice developed the 10-step process that he describes as the “fully blended mix of TQM methods and applied behavioral analysis,” an approach that was instrumental in earning Eastman Chemical, from which he has since retired, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. “This approach is the best known method in the world today to accelerate improvement,” says Justice.

(more…)

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Thom Talks: Leadership, The First Key
December 18, 2009 by Clay Rolston
Pal’s operations at each location are based on three principles:
- Leaders and managers champion company values by setting an example with their own personal choices and behaviors.
- Each business transaction is focused on creating an experience for customers that delights them.
- Store leaders and managers are to think strategically and act like owners to maximize success of their operations and their personal successes. This includes considering the short- and long-term impact of decisions and actions as well as the local and systemic impact.
These long-standing principles form the cornerstone of the Pal’s Leadership approach. The overall goal is to create a business system and culture that has a self-replicating passion for excellence.

The key character traits we focus on for store-level leadership and management are:

Decisiveness, Responsibility, Organization, Boldness, Truthfulness, Sincerity, Dependability, Punctuality, Thoroughness, Enthusiasm, Creativity, Initiative, Diligence, Discernment, Flexibility, and Honesty.

When we find an employee with all these characteristics, we know we have a candidate for our Leadership Development Pipeline.

Once trained, or leaders have three primary jobs as store leaders. They are to assess processes, teach and coach, and build relationships with customers. We do not focus them on the store’s daily functional jobs so strongly that they cannot see the big picture and how they fit into it and drive success.

True to our core value of visionary leadership, corporate leadership helps each store create a vision and goals for that specific store and to align it with the corporate vision and goals. To help monitor progress toward the vision and goals, to recalibrate performance to standards, and to define our high level of trust and respect, all corporate visits to a store are announced six weeks in advance, along with an agenda of topics to be reviewed and discussed.

- Thom Crosby, President/CEO Pal’s from Restaurateur’s Insight Into Performance Excellence
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