Henri Matisse: Cut Out for Re-invention

How we re-invent ourselves is a common theme these days as we emerge from the pandemic. Underneath all that “quiet quitting” is a yearning among many to do something else.  I recently was inspired by how the artist Henri Matisse re-invented himself late in life. When I first moved to Washington DC, I went to a temporary exhibit about Matisse’s cutouts at the East Wing of the National Gallery.  I was young and did not know much about them at the time and I thought they were sensational.  I was impressed by his evolution into pure fields of color and […]

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WHAT PRIVACY PROS CAN LEARN FROM ADMIRAL ARLEIGH BURKE

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. […]

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ADMIRAL RAY SPRUANCE AND COMPETING OBJECTIVES

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 […]

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