The Whitespace Project

Where’s Whitespace? The final chapter

Anthony Howard — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 07:15:56 +0000

One may well wonder if I have been locked away in ‘whitespace’ for several months. Alternatively, since my last post finished with ‘just about to board a plane in Singapore’ you could be forgiven for thinking I may have got off the ground but not back on.

The reality is – and it is a lame excuse – that I just got too busy, and then I got distracted, and then I found it hard to make the time to…

The Conversations

Anthony Howard — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 19:28:38 +0000

After a wonderful week last week in Scandinavia I have enjoyed an equally wonderful week in the the UK. Although the scenery is not as spectacular, the conversations are just as stimulating and rewarding. I need to spend time drawing all the threads together to discern the weak signals that are emerging. Since that can sometimes take a while I thought you may enjoy hearing about the meetings, and following up some of this material and some of these people…

Travel in WhiteSpace – nearly impossible!

Anthony Howard — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 20:37:22 +0000

As we approach the middle of the year I am approaching 50 days of being offline, and had rather – naively as it turns out – thought I could get ahead of the curve during my overseas travel to Europe. I had ideas of days without email, without surfing the net, just going to meetings, getting about my business, and being ‘free’ of technology.

It seems nothing could be further from the truth. Despite the best of intentions (ie today…

Innotown Observations

Anthony Howard — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 04:10:12 +0000

Well the conference is finished and I am off to London for a further series of conversations. Let me just say (in case you don’t read all the way to the end) that I recommend this conference, and suggest you find a way to attend next year. And if you do, add a couple more days to your itinerary to take in the spectacular surrounds of Aalesund.

Overall a great experience, and I…

Out on the edge

Anthony Howard — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 07:26:02 +0000

I am writing this from Aalesund in Norway, where I have come to attend the annual InnoTown conference – an annual gathering in this spectacular location to get an inspiration injection (claim the organisers). The photo was taken at 5.30 this morning after I climbed the 418 steps to the top of the local lookout.

As part of my day job as CEO of The Confidere Group, I try to spend…

How to think at the edge

Anthony Howard — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 08:59:30 +0000

While many people are writing about the need to execute, to implement, to do what matters, few are writing about not only the need to think better, but how to do it. Roger Martin is one of these.

Roger is Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. He is particularly interested in the mental processes employed by successful leaders, and is best know for his theory of “integrative thinking” – the…

Designing a better future with Matt Taylor

Anthony Howard — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 00:49:54 +0000

I had the privilege of spending a day with Matt Taylor and a small group of people one evening last week and then all day Saturday. I would rank Matt among perhaps the top half dozen people I have met because of the breadth of his vision, the depth of his humanity, the scope of his knowledge, and the power of his intellect.

His website and links provide fuller details, but I want to highlight what…

The multiplier effect of email – we speed up ourselves

Anthony Howard — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 23:50:37 +0000

I have noticed that emails have a multiplier effect, whereas voicecalls have a linear effect.

In the premail days we would chat to one another over the phone. Each party would then act on the information, perhaps passing it on to another, and then perhaps another. But always one at a time. There was no desire conversations that included multiple participants, other than the sales or management conference calls. But even then information only went one stop along the line.…

The WhiteSpace Cafe

Anthony Howard — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:27:50 +0000

Found a fascinating piece by Carolyn Jones in the San Francisco Chronicle, reporting on a cafe that asks people not to use their laptops in the store. Apart from the financial advantage (stopping people buying a coffee and holding a table for hours) the real reason is to foster conversation and have chatter replace keystrokes. How innovative – let’s get back to talking to one another.

This is an exciting new angle for The WhiteSpace Project. As people…

Why Google mail is useless and Outlook can be a distraction

Anthony Howard — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 03:50:44 +0000

The WhiteSpace Project is allowing me to observe my behaviour on days when I am on, and comparing it with days when I am off.

One observation is the way I relate to email. Firstly, I want to know exactly where I stand – what is new, what is outstanding, what may be urgent. When I started the Project I was using Google mail via the web, but rapidly found the useless way it files information exposed me to the…