Nebraska farm boy Arleigh Burke rose from an ensign fresh out of the Naval Academy to Chief of Naval Operations, the top job in the U.S. Navy. Along the way, he successfully expanded the scope of his understanding of leadership, from the perspective of a ship, a squadron, and a fleet, to a Navy with new technologies and an evolving strategic role. There is so much that a privacy professional can learn from his example, and much of it is captured in something he told a subordinate after an engagement in Blackett Strait in the Solomon Islands in March 1943. […]

I recently read a nifty book by James Hornfischer, The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific, 1944-1945. Comedian John Mullaney has a bit about old guys who draw endless analogies to World War II, and I guess I am exemplifying that cliche at the moment. It’s not like I tell dad jokes or wear business socks to the beach, but I do like history it can help us understand the present as well as the past. It’s a very good book that I hoped would be a distraction, but inevitably thoughts of the practice of […]