While all brilliant innovators are PMs in their own right, they pale in comparison with Leonardo da Vinci. Here’s a summary of an excellent article by GanttHead on what you can learn from the master and how it can benefit you role has a project manager.

1. Be curious. Da Vinci was so curious, he wouldn’t take yes for an answer. At a time when no one questioned anything, da Vinci questioned everything.

2. Think for yourself. Da Vinci was not afraid to make mistakes and learn from them. And neither was every great inventor who followed him. da Vinci said, “Test knowledge through experience.”

3. Sharpen your senses. According to da Vinci, the five senses are the ministers of the soul. He trained his sensory awareness the same way Olympic athletes train their bodies. He warned against being locked into and blocked by the same thought processes.

4. Embrace ambiguity, paradox and uncertainty. One of the most significant characteristics of highly creative people is their openness to the unknown and willingness to use their intuition. As a thinker far ahead of his time, da Vinci learned to translate imagination into a technical language and to experience major breakthroughs through intuition. In the same vein, Einstein imagined what it would be like to surf out into the universe on a sunbeam.

5. Balance art and science, logic and imagination with intuition. da Vinci felt that if you want to innovate, you’re going to have to cut loose from conventional grooves. The problem is that people are stuck in either a right- or left-brained world. The trick is to learn to be a balanced thinker. For da Vinci, that meant being creative, rigorous, playful and imaginative.

6. Balance body and mind. In addition to being mentally sharp, da Vinci was also a fitness freak. His recipe for a healthy mind and body: “Avoid grievous moods and keep your mind cheerful.” He also insisted that attitude affects well-being and stressed the importance of keeping mind and body lean and active.

7. Try to see how everything connects to everything else. “That’s system thinking,” Gelb explains. “Da Vinci said you have to see patterns, relationships and processes and how they all fit together.”

Full article - Leonardo da Vinci: The Project Manager’s PM by Bob Weinstein Gantt Head