Apple Founder Steve Jobs once said, “I hire people brighter than me and then I get out of their way.” Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffet has often expressed the same philosophy.

These successful entrepreneurs aren’t intimidated by employees who may outshine them because they know that the strength of an organization lies in its collective intelligence.

At Sirois Tool, we feel the same way. We’ve always strived to hire people who have more knowledge, creativity, and problem-solving abilities than we do, because we know they will inspire innovation and help our company grow.

We provide our employees with the opportunity to learn from the entire Sirois team as well as our education partners. This is especially beneficial to our Apprentices.

Of course, the potential downside of doing this means that your best and brightest employees may ultimately leave your company to start their own businesses, which some of our employees have done.

“We have very little turnover of employees, but we are very proud when someone leaves and starts their own business,” Sirois Tool President Alan Ortner said.

In July, Ortner visited former employee Ariel Cuellar at his new company, American New Tool, in Orange City, Florida.

“Ari is our first former apprentice to start his own business,” Ortner noted. “This makes 3 new businesses started by former employees while I have been involved in the company.”

Around the year 2000, our longstanding CNC lathe lead person, Michael Knockwood, left to form Eagle Specialty Machining in Canada. And more recently, one of our best CNC programmers, Vincent Canepari, left Sirois Tool to co-found Allied Precision Components, LLC with one of his professional connections.

We can’t say that their departures didn’t hurt, because losing workforce talent always does. But the sting of their departures is entirely offset by the contributions they made while they were here.

During their time at Sirois, the CNC skills of these talented employees helped us evolve into the company we are today. And although we certainly miss seeing them in our facility, we know that they’re just a phone call away. We haven’t really lost them; they’ve just transitioned from being our employees to being our allied peers. And when we’re at full capacity we sometimes reach out to our peers for help, as we’ve done with Michael at Eagle Specialty.

It’s a given that when you hire people smarter than you, you risk having them leave. But you also create a ripple effect of innovation. You add value not just to your team, but to the entire organization. And if these smart employees become skilled enough to take what they’ve learned and build their own companies, they’ll help strengthen our industry. And isn’t a strong manufacturing industry what we all want?

That said, we will continue to hire the brightest people we can find. And if they leave to start their own businesses, we will enthusiastically cheer them on as we wave goodbye.