Austin - I was worried about Brian Sullivan’s “Design
like Da Vinci” presentation here at South by Southwest. After all, Michael Gelb
covered the “Think like Leonardo” ground pretty well many years ago. I spent a
long weekend with Gelb and others at an Omega Institute seminar on the subject
in the late 1990s.
Sullivan said that we have 65,000 thoughts each day and that 65 percent of them are negative. He offered no citation. He argues that it’s important for creators and evaluators alike to resist the very human temptation to pick things apart immediately without asking productive questions and letting something marinate. Sullivan told of a situation in which Da Vinci’s way-ahead-of-its-time design for a movable wall was rejected by the City of Venice, immediately and out of hand.
Sullivan’s prescription here would intersect nicely with the work of Daniel Goleman and others in emotional intelligence. If the role of self-knowledge in self-regulation is key to emotional intelligence, then we need more leader-evaluators who know to control their emotional impulses and let creative work breathe before condemning or praising it.
Twitter @jessicamcwade
Happily, Sullivan provided useful reminders to those of us
who enjoy the cottage industry that is Da Vinci for creative professionals. And
just as happily, he credited Gelb for his work. Focusing on Da Vinci’s sketches,
which number in the thousands, Sullivan spoke to us from his vantage point as a
web usability expert at the Sabre Human Factors Center in Dallas. He offered
many tips including striving for quantity in creative development, a view some
might challenge, and understanding that the search for perfection “will kill
you.”
I was most intrigued, however, by his discussion of what some
call the “swoop and poop executive seagull maneuver.” Yes, we all know this
one. It’s the infuriating habit that some busy and, yes, self-important
executives have of ignoring a project and making no contribution to it until
the moment it’s revealed when, as if on cue, they crap all over the idea. Scholars
ask in these situations that we make room for “appreciative inquiry” and, in
Sullivan’s words, that we “defer judgment, both positive and negative” After
all, as Da Vinci himself once said, “It’s easier to resist in the beginning
than in the end.” Sullivan said that we have 65,000 thoughts each day and that 65 percent of them are negative. He offered no citation. He argues that it’s important for creators and evaluators alike to resist the very human temptation to pick things apart immediately without asking productive questions and letting something marinate. Sullivan told of a situation in which Da Vinci’s way-ahead-of-its-time design for a movable wall was rejected by the City of Venice, immediately and out of hand.
Sullivan’s prescription here would intersect nicely with the work of Daniel Goleman and others in emotional intelligence. If the role of self-knowledge in self-regulation is key to emotional intelligence, then we need more leader-evaluators who know to control their emotional impulses and let creative work breathe before condemning or praising it.
Twitter @jessicamcwade