Once, during a lecture at an art museum on Roman and Greek sculpture, the lecturer kept referring to the noses on the statues. I raised my hand to point out that the statues had no noses, as they had all been broken off. Her reply told me a lot about visionary leadership. Leadership is about seeing the things that are not there that should be, and about seeing things that are there that no one else notices.
White space is the space between things that give the things their meaning.
Sherlock Holmes once solved a case based upon a dog that did not bark. What we have to do as leaders is look at the obvious for deeper meaning and notice things other people miss. Let me point out a few things we might have missed because we were not looking at the white space. It is obvious that education is at the top of nearly every politician's agenda. The president pushes it, Congress finally caught on, and the governors say it is the central issue.