Stoner expects every one of its employees to be a leader. Before starting their jobs, new employees complete two weeks of orientation that includes shadowing every job in the company—including that of the president. They can do all that in two weeks because Stoner only has 45 employees.

Located in Quarryville, Pennsylvania, Stoner makes specialized cleaners, lubricants, and coatings, primarily for car care. In 2003, it became the smallest company to win the Baldrige Award.

“We first learned about Baldrige in 1991 through the local Lancaster County program,” said Rob Ecklin, Jr., Stoner’s president. “We started to familiarize ourselves with the criteria then.” Stoner became the first company in the county to win the award in 1995. A few years later it submitted its first Baldrige application.

“We like to learn, to challenge ourselves and to be challenged,” said Ecklin. “Only a small percentage of companies truly want to improve. We’re one of them. We get excited about performance excellence. This is not a sexy business. It’s not high tech. Not flashy. But we’ve been able to get extraordinary results from ordinary people.”

Stoner gets these results by expecting every employee to be a leader. It involves all employees in setting the direction for the company. It uses teams to flatten the organization and push accountability to the front lines. It reinforces accountability by giving every employee the authority to spend up to $1,000, without supervisor approval, to resolve customer questions or complaints promptly. As a result, Stoner’s retention rate for key customers is better than 98% and less than 1.5% of all customer transactions result in below expectations feedback.

Stoner offers no special benefits programs and its pay scale is slightly under the local average, but its employees earn far more than average through a program that pays 20 to 50 percent bonuses for functional team results that are linked to corporate goals. “Most people are skeptical of the program because the percentages are so large. The way they see it, the biggest drawback is giving up control and autonomy, but you have to do that for variable compensation to work,” Ecklin said.

You can’t give up control and autonomy without total confidence in the quality of your workforce. As Stoner’s general manager, Rob Marchalonis, said, “We try to hire the best, give responsibility and freedom, and share the rewards.”

To learn more about Stoner’s world-class management system, click here.

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