Leonardo and his Creation

Today we remember Leonardo da Vinci who died on
2 May 1519, exactly 500 years ago. Leonardo remains the most famous example of a “homo universalis”, a versatile man and a man of creativity and passion. He could pass as the man most recognised in history for having developed his many talents.

Looking at today’s company culture, Leonardo could be a role model. Today’s adage is: follow your dreams and passions, develop yourself! I sometimes call this the Steve Jobs culture. Although I support like most people the idea of self-development, this Steve Jobs culture is based on a contemporary problem and a contemporary misconception. The contemporary problem is that in larger organisations, there are only a few people who can really make free choices of their own (such as Steve Jobs) and the other 99% needs to sweat to realise these nice ideas. Even worse, the biotope of knowledge workers is far from attractive in most cases and that is why all this Steve Jobs nonsense is spreading well on the social media. Larger companies will not support multiple Leonardos, at most a single one who pulls the ropes like Steve Jobs.

The misconception is the idea that creative people are people who are doing what they like. Wrong. Creative people have a clear vision of what they would like to realise and they do everything they can to realise it, including the activities they absolutely detest. In other words, creative people aim at a beautiful result of creativity, not at the creation work itself, which is usually hard. Passion means suffering and passionate people suffer a lot during their creation work; they only enjoy the beauty of the end result. A thing of beauty is a joy forever ... once it is ready. The joy of creation is not doing what you like, it is holding in your hand what you could only imagine for so long. Creativity can’t do without patience and diligence.

I refer to “Believe in Personal Progress” and “Ode to Curiosity” and to my Dutch blog: “Imaginatio”.