Rupali Bajpai- 2018PGP039
SENSAZIONE
CONSTANTLY SHARPEN THE SENSES
Itika Joshi- 2018PGP018
Vanya Nigam- 2018PGP056
Anjali Gupta- 2018PGP065
Ayush Dharnidharka- 2018PGP011
Anushree Bhatt- 2018PGP067
Siva Hemanth- 2018PGP015
MAIN IDEA
“The five senses - sight, sound, touch, taste and smell -
are the keys to creating added value in any kind of
activity. Therefore, by refining and improving the senses,
you increase both your intelligence and your ability to
learn from the world around you.”
He believed and wrote that the average human “looks
without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without
feeling, eats without tasting, moves without physical
awareness, inhales without awareness of odour or
fragrance, and talks without thinking.”
By increasing the amount and quality of sensory
information you take in each day, you refine your
intelligence and increase the quality of your own life.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT FOR MANAGERS?
It’s hard to overstate how important this is for coaches.
For instance, when you’re in the presence of a really great
coach, they truly see what’s going on.
They hear your voice tone, they see your body language, they
look at your facial expression and they are instantly aware of
any discrepancy between your body language, voice tone,
and what you’re actually saying.
This is a huge part of the art of coaching! As a coach, this is
a skill you want to be developing for the rest of your life. You
want to be sharpening your listening skill, your observational
skill.
You want to be able to read a person’s queues in the moment,
and then again, asking the right questions based on the
feedback you perceive.”
LEONARDO WAS A PAINTER, INVENTOR, SCIENTIST, AND SO
FORTH. IN THE WORLD OF BUSINESS, IS IT NECESSARY TO BE
SO MULTI-FACETED? OR IS SPECIALIZATION PREFERABLE?
Leonardo had as many as 16 different occupations: painter, sculptor, architect,
interior designer, anatomist, engineer, agronomist, optician, geologist, botanist,
urban planner, musician, gourmet, mathematician, festival organizer and, of
course, heretical philosopher.
He was an impatient soul and he was profoundly observant. Today it would
be impossible to dominate so many sciences and arts at the same time.
Fortunately, teams that are formed by complementary personalities can
behave with a Leonardian mindset.
In the business world, it is an advantage when their wide range of skills
extends into such areas as flexibility, adaptability to the changing
environment and contextual intelligence.
It is absurdly dangerous to take the view that people are interchangeable, as
in Taylor’s classic approach to management. As people, we cannot do
everything.
Talent requires a vocation and a sense of enjoyment.
1. VISION-THE DIFFERENCE Looking
Turning one’s
Seeing The perception of
an object/how a

BETWEEN LOOKING AND SEEING eyes to a certain

object
person
determines what
he is looking at

Can be defined
Methods of learning how to see Also refers to as an act or
appearance physical activity

Write a description of a sunrise in your notebook

Practice focusing on near and distant objects often

Place your index fingers together at eye level in front of your

face and move them apart while looking straight ahead

Increase the amount of time you spend visualizing positive

outcomes
“Saper Vedere”
Learn to draw or paint
Da Vinci’s visualization process of knowing how to see
 2. SOUND -- THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LISTENING AND
HEARING
“Sound in a space affects us profoundly. It changes our heart rate,
breathing, hormone secretion, brain waves, it affects our emotions
and our cognition”
Ways to improve the sense
• Listen to the sounds that surround you. Separate them into
layers -- the loudest, the more subtle, the rare, etc
• Listen for total silence -- the complete absence of sound
• Study the lives and work of composers and artists. Listen for
the patterns they use time and again. Listen to each
• individual component of the music, and identify how that
element contributes to the whole
• Develop your own personal all-time top 10 list of music
Ineffective listening causes the following:
• Lower concentration
• Incomplete information absorption
• Dissatisfied communication
“Far too often in business we only listen passively and as a result miss vital information that could serve as the inspiration for
some new idea”
 3. TOUCHING -- THE DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN CONTACT AND FEELING.
•The sense of touch, or tactile sense, is made up of a very fine network of receptors in
your skin, forming the body's largest sensory system. Because there are so many sensory
nerves, we can feel the lightest touch. The skin is our body's shield, and touch makes us
aware of your boundaries.
•The sense of touch protects our body by signalling potential danger and requiring us to
make a prompt response.
•Richard Gregory, one of the most influential researchers in the world of visual
perception, once wrote that ‘one cannot be attacked and eaten by an image […], and
neither can one feed on images’.
•That is, while vision (and audition) inform us about ‘distal’ stimuli, our sense of touch
informs us about those things that are occurring at the very last frontier between
ourselves and the outside world.
•However, touch is not only our last system of defence, it also provides our main
connection with the external world, both socially and physically.

• Look at a fine painting. Ponder the delicate touch required to produce an effect like that.
• Go outside and touch some of the patterns that occur in nature, feeling for texture and form.
• Spend an entire day focusing solely on how things feel.
 4. TASTE
“Taste is generally associated with the food. But in reality it
depends equally on the state of our body.”
Ways to improve the sense
• When eating, avoid distractions and focus on how the food
tastes. Experience all the flavors available.
• Buy three kinds of the same food and write down in your
notebook the differences in taste between the three.
• Get involved in groups that offer a broad experience of new
and different taste sensations - such as a regular dinner group
or some other special interest group.
Connection with sense of smell:
Pinch your nose and chew the strawberry. Your tongue will
immediately sense that it is sweet. That is coming from its sugars,
and it’s the primary taste of the fruit. But with your nose closed,
you’ll not be able to exactly identify what it is you’re eating.
Now let go of your nose. You’ll immediately have it back again:
ah, a strawberry.
 5. SMELL
• We are disconnected from our noses. We need them much less in everyday life, and
our vision overrides the sense of smell in a lot of situations.
• Awareness of our innate smelling abilities, however, is complicated because the human
language doesn’t have words for a trillion smells, and much of smelling happens under
the radar of our consciousness.
• Unlike our other senses, the olfactory nerves do not proceed directly to the brain’s
thalamus, the gateway to consciousness. Instead, information feeds from the nose to
cortical areas to arouse emotions and memories without our awareness. When it comes
to smells, people can be influenced and not realize it. This image looks like a carnival mask, but it
• A lot of evidence suggests that emotions have a scent. Also, such smelled emotions may actually shows the key structures mammals use
be contagious. Say you go out to meet a friend who had been watching funny videos every time they smell. The ‘mouth’ is the nasal
on her mobile phone, making her feel happy. As you approach her, you catch a whiff cavity of a mouse, which is lined with
specialized odour-sensing cells(in green). Se
of her scent and automatically smile. But had your friend just watched a scary movie,
signal to the olfactory bulbs- the round ‘eyes’
her body odor would have likely made you feel apprehensive in the image

Write in your notebook what you smell when visiting various places in your day - Broaden your vocabulary past a simple ‘‘It stinks’’
or ‘‘It smells nice’’, add floral (roses), minty (peppermint), musky (musk), ethereal (pears), resinous (camphor), foul (rotten eggs) and acrid
(vinegar) to your vocabulary, study aromatherapy -- the treatment
6. SYNESTHESIA -- THE MERGING OF
THE SENSES.
What would your painting sound like if it were an opera? How would that b-flat
blues taste if it were a soup? What colour is your first chapter? How would your
sculpture feel and look if it were wrapped around you like a cloak?

When the sense are merged together, great artistic and

scientific genius can be created.
• Try drawing the shapes and colors that come to mind when listening to your
favorite piece of music.
• Try transposing your favorite artists or scientists. For example, if Mozart were a
painter, who would he be like, and what would Mozart’s paintings have looked
like.
• Solve a synthetic problem, using each of the five senses as a part of the solution.
Write your answer in your notebook, along with the reasons why.
• Create a specific workplace where creative problem solving is the sole activity.
Remove all distractions and add the tools that enhance creative thinking – good
lighting, a sound system, inspiring art, comfortable furnishings, pleasant aromas,
etc.
• The environment should provide accessories that are designed to enhance and
strengthen the senses.
APPLYING DA VINCI’S SENSAZIONE
Sadly today, even artists, have ended up with their senses deadened. To
fully experience the sensory and sensual thrills that surround us, we need
to be aware of them. We need to be open to being perpetually
surprised. We need to nurture the feelings of awe and wonder.
Michael Gelb's How To Think Like Leonardo da Vinci-
Gelb offers lots of exercises to help you awaken your senses. My
favorite is “Subtle Speculation: The Art of Visualization.” He explains:
“The ability to visualize a desired outcome is built into your brain, and
your brain is designed to help you succeed in matching that picture with
your performance. And the more thoroughly you involve all your senses,
the more compelling your visualization becomes.”
And it's just as important to change your sensory inputs regularly, whether
that means going somewhere new or reconfiguring what you see in front
of you in your studio space. Surprise yourself with something new!
WHAT DOES LEONARDO’S FORMATIVE PROCESS HAVE IN
COMMON WITH THAT OF AN EXECUTIVE?
The formative process of the Florentine genius never stopped.
In addition to the teachings of Verrochio and his team, he learned
from the portrait artists of the Netherlands and from the humanists
of the Renaissance, including Machiavelli (Although his values were
very different).
He collected his observations and thoughts in thousands of pages of
notebooks, which he began in his 30s.
The best managers never stop learning, studying, reflecting,
training and practicing coaching. Personally or professionally, they
are continuously improving.
There is nothing worse than the arrogance to believe that you
already know everything.
WHAT CURRENT COMPANIES COULD SERVE AS AN
EXAMPLE OF “LEONARDIAN” COMPANIES AND WHY?
When compared the Leonardian company to the Taylorist company
(based on the doctrine of America’s Frederick W. Taylor), which has
been the model, openly or tacitly, of most companies. Taylorism has
instilled the notion that management is a science (when it is actually
also ethics, science and art); that human beings are lazy by nature
(which leads to distrust in professional management); and that all
companies can be divided into those that think and those that
execute.
The Taylor approach measures the time spent on tasks and it
promotes specialization. On the contrary, Leonardian environments
promote curiosity, vocation, apprenticeship, initiative, dynamism,
mastery, reputation, legacy…
As examples, I have cited Toyota, Nokia and Apple; one from each
continent. In any case, companies are neither 100% Leonardian nor
100% Taylorist but have various proportions of one or the other.