About Bacal & Associates

Bacal & Associates was founded in 1992 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and was originally set up to help companies in their quests to implement Total Quality Management and continuous improvement processes. The original intent was to conduct seminars and do consulting interventions, with a focus on government and non-profits, since that's where Robert's was most experienced.

As with many plans, things shifted over time. In 1992-93, Robert started producing two newsletters for government staff, in both paper and fax form (which still is produced by the way) as a means of marketing, and hence was writing on a regular basis. As time progressed it was apparent that the TQM gig wasn't' going to work out, and more and more requests were received to do defusing hostile customer seminars, in addition to consulting work on team development, and strategic planning.

The upshot was that a good part of the 90's involved doing a lot of training seminars, and some consulting, while using any spare time to write some books on subjects like HR development, TQM in government, and finally the whopper, The Defusing Hostile Customers Workbook For The Public Sector, which is now in it's third edition.

In addition, what started out as a fun hobby -- messing around on the Internet, became an integral part of the business, as we created a number of niche websites for topics such as conflict management, customer service, strategic planning, communication. Bacal & Associates visitors number in the tens of millions (that's actual people), but then again, they've been around since...well, the www part. BTW, all of our websites are designed by Robert Bacal, and maintained primarily by him, with some occasional help from a few associates.

Around 2002, Bacal & Associates moved from Winnipeg, to the Ottawa region, to be closer to family and friends. The company now exists in Casselman, Ontario which is near Ottawa, and still convenient to major centers, Montreal and Toronto.

In the past few years, Bacal & Associates have morphed into a company that is oriented towards helping people learn, whether the methods are through seminars, keynotes, or through print and electronically formatted materials. Bacal & Associates is moving to incorporate publishing as a major part of its activities, because, simply put, it's a more efficient way to reach more people to help them learn and reach their goals.

As a simple, tiny company, we have the advantage of being able to accept assignments that we feel passionate about, and we're also able to react quickly to requests. Robert is still available to do some seminars/consulting (see services section) and keynote speaking, but prefers to do so within driving distance of Ottawa (which is actually quite a big area).

Future Plans

We'll continue our move towards creating learning materials, both in print, and for electronic devices such as the Kindle, Kobo, Ipad, Ipod and other smart phones. Our goal is to produce 3-5 significant books in 2011, and we have enough writing projects on tap to keep us busy until 2015. But heck, we started out as a TQM company. So who knows.

March, 2011