Re: This isn't "self starting" ...
"... this is going against corporate policy and procedure. In my world, such loose cannons are terminated without so much as a by-your-leave."
Agreed, but my experiences with these type of folks, is they are smooth talking, fast walking snake oil sales types that come in schmooze/dazzle the board with what they say they can do for their dept, and get approval to pull their whole dept off the grid from normal IT.
Oddly enough they actually do have the talent necessary to do it (at first), some brilliant engineers who can handle it, and it works great for about a year, maybe TWO. Their brilliant/but short handed staff which had been working just fine? They've had attrition, and the replacements aren't as capable as their predecessors, OR their predecessors didn't document themselves well enough for a replacement to step in and have a snowball's chance in hell at success, and they leave. Starting in on year 3 or 4? Its falling apart or has collapsed completely, the department is in a lot of trouble, and begging corporate IT to help out, and bad mouthing IT to the board for not being team players... Effectively a Kobyashi Maru scenario for Corporate IT... (I've also seen where it went wrong from the get go, but the end result is the same, somehow the rogue's failure was still IT's fault)
Moral of the story, hire/retain ONE smooth talking snake oil type in corporate IT to politically counter the rogue in whatever dept that is pitching a breakaway movement.