In 1482, Leonardo da Vinci sent a job application letter to Ludovico Sforza, the archduke of Milan. Knowing his future employer was enmeshed in frequent military battles, the letter described Leonardo\u2019s prowess at designing war machines, diverting rivers, building bridges, and designing weapons. He concluded his resume with the greatest understatement in art history: \u201cI can also do \u2026 painting.\u201d Indeed.<\/p>\n
A pioneer in disciplines including fluid dynamics, optics, cartography, engineering, aviation, and anatomy, it was Leonardo\u2019s ability to bring his science to art\u2014and his art to science\u2014that distinguished him in such a range of fields.<\/p>\n
Leadership in these complex times similarly requires an adept mix of art and science\u2014gut instinct balanced with data-driven decision-making, creativity coupled with systems thinking. And we can look to the works\u2014and workstyle\u2014of this Renaissance master to glean insights on how to deftly blend art and science in our own leadership.<\/p>\n
What a viewer sees in the\u00a0Ginevra<\/i> depends on the lens they bring to the painting. An artist may notice techniques perfected by Leonardo to depict depth, such as chiaroscuro (the use of shadows based on how light falls on images) and sfumato (smokiness rather than hard lines on the subject\u2019s jaw). A symbolist might recognize how Leonardo was communicating the subject\u2019s character: The church steeple represented piety and the juniper branch was a sign of virtue in Italian culture.\u00a0A Latin scholar might notice not just symbolism but also playful humor, the Latin word for juniper (ginepra) being a play on the subject\u2019s name. And a forensic investigator may be intrigued to find Leonardo\u2019s fingerprint embedded behind Ginevra\u2019s right shoulder.<\/p>\n
Stepping into someone else\u2019s experience opens our own eyes as leaders to a richer depth of insights. Each year on Founder\u2019s Day, the McDonald\u2019s corporate office empties and its senior leaders work at the grills, front counters, fry stations, and drive-through windows of hundreds of their restaurants around the world\u2014giving them a chance to see the experience from customers\u2019 and store associates\u2019 vantage points.<\/a><\/p>\n Similarly, experiencing diverse strengths, skill sets, and viewpoints can help illuminate new ideas. The Santa Fe Institute, a research center focused on the study of complex systems, brings together business, scientific, educational, and other leaders, connecting multiple lived experiences and mindsets to \u201cunderstand and unify the underlying, shared patterns in complex physical, biological, social, cultural, technological\u201d systems in pursuit of a common goal.<\/p>\n Source: https:\/\/www2.deloitte.com\/us\/en\/insights\/topics\/leadership\/leadership-lessons-from-leonardo.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 1482, Leonardo da Vinci sent a job application letter to Ludovico Sforza, the archduke of Milan. Knowing his future employer was enmeshed in frequent military battles, the letter described Leonardo\u2019s prowess at designing war machines, diverting rivers, building bridges, and designing weapons. He concluded his resume with the greatest understatement in art history: \u201cI […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbs.binus.ac.id\/management\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbs.binus.ac.id\/management\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbs.binus.ac.id\/management\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbs.binus.ac.id\/management\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbs.binus.ac.id\/management\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bbs.binus.ac.id\/management\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3562,"href":"https:\/\/bbs.binus.ac.id\/management\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3561\/revisions\/3562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbs.binus.ac.id\/management\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbs.binus.ac.id\/management\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbs.binus.ac.id\/management\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}