It’s unfortunate that mistaken perceptions are often perceived as reality; in a diabolical way the mistake then becomes reality.

When people ask what I do and I explain that I teach people how to do their outsourcing better and smarter, invariably they jump into the conversation with their experience about how their company “outsourced”  their work to some some country where people can’t speak English and took their jobs away.

Outsourcing has been going strong since Peter Drucker and his Harvard Business Review articles in the 1980’s advised, “Do what you do best – and outsource the rest!”

But why do people get outsourcing and offshoring confused? Why is there the perception that outsourcing is offshoring? I spent five years working for a $1 billion global outsource provider and the lion’s share of their work was done in their region. The company outsourced, yes indeed, but the jobs stayed close to home and in that country.