Earlier in my career I reported to the owner of a small privately held firm who was laser-focused on significantly growing the business.  With a foot seemingly always on the gas pedal, their work ethic was well-known and well-discussed throughout the organization.  While the company did impressively scale, direct reports to this individual often confided in being exhausted from the pace and the disruption to sleep.  It was common to receive emails in the middle of the night....

Outsourcing of company work is as commonplace as any other means by which projects are assigned and completed. In a business-to-business framework, with contracts, SLA’s, and quality measures, it often makes sense and yields desired results while keeping full-time employee workloads in balance. Not all outsourcing, however, is a controlled process, visible throughout the chain of command. In his recent article “The Shadowy New Way Employees are Cheating Their Way to the...