It’s Vesak, so we make lanterns at home. Every year. It’s one of those rituals you don’t really decide to do — it just happens, because it’s Vesak, and that’s what you do.
This year Shaakya wanted to make one herself. First time. So she took the frame, took the tissue, and got to work. Glue, paper, careful hands, the lot. She was thrilled with it — you can see it on her face in the photo. And honestly, it looked great. Neat. Crisp. Properly built.
There was just one small problem. She had covered all six sides.
Now, if you’ve ever made a Vesak lantern, you already know what’s wrong. A lantern needs two sides left open. One at the bottom — that’s where the candle goes. And one at the top — so the heat has somewhere to escape, and the whole thing doesn’t quietly cook itself from the inside and go up in flames. Two open sides. Everybody knows that.
Except — that’s the thing, isn’t it. I knew that. I’ve made dozens of these over the years. To me, leaving two sides open isn’t even a “step.” It’s just… what a lantern is. It’s so obvious it doesn’t feel like knowledge at all.
But Shaakya had never made one before. And here’s what struck me: covering all six sides isn’t the silly thing to do. It’s the sensible thing to do. If someone hands you a frame and some paper and says “make a lantern,” and you’ve never seen the inside of one lit up, then of course you cover everything. Why would you leave gaps? A box with holes in it looks like a mistake. She wasn’t being careless. She was being logical with the information she had.
The information she didn’t have was the bit I never gave her.
And that’s the whole story, really. That’s where I caught myself.
The mistake I almost made
Because here’s what usually happens — what I’ve done plenty of times at work, and what I see done to people constantly. We hand someone a task. We don’t explain it properly, because to us it’s obvious. Then they do it wrong in some “obvious” way. And then — this is the ugly part — we scold them. “How could you not know that? It’s basic!”
It’s basic to you. You’ve done it a hundred times. The knowledge has sunk so deep into you that you’ve forgotten it’s knowledge at all. You’ve forgotten there was ever a first time when you didn’t know it either.
The person in front of you is exactly where you were on your first lantern. The only difference is nobody filmed you.
“Obvious” is the most dangerous word in management
I’ve come to believe that the more obvious a task feels to you, the more dangerous it is to delegate without explaining. Not less dangerous — more. Because the obviousness is precisely what tricks you into skipping the training. “I don’t need to explain this,” you think. “Anyone can see how it works.”
No. You can see how it works. That’s a completely different sentence.
The two open sides on a Vesak lantern are invisible knowledge. You can’t see them by looking at a finished, lit lantern from the outside — the glow hides the gaps. You only know they’re there if someone showed you, or if you built one and learned the hard way. Most of the important knowledge in any organisation is exactly like this. Invisible. Assumed. Never said out loud, because the people who have it can’t even remember not having it.
And when we don’t say it out loud, we don’t get to be annoyed when it doesn’t get done. We built that mistake. We just outsourced the labour of making it.
What I should do — what we all should do
Train first. Even when it feels unnecessary. Especially when it feels unnecessary.
Show the person the lit lantern, not just the frame. Tell them why the two sides stay open — not just that they must. Because “do it this way” gets forgotten the moment you walk off; “the heat needs somewhere to go or the whole thing burns” sticks for life. People remember reasons. They forget instructions.
And if it does go wrong anyway? Then look at what you left out before you look at what they got wrong. Nine times out of ten, the gap was on your side, not theirs.
Shaakya’s lantern, for the record, was beautiful. We just opened up the two sides, dropped the candle in, and it glowed exactly as it should.
She’ll never make that “mistake” again. Not because I scolded her. Because now she knows where the heat needs to go.
So does her team, someday, I hope — whoever they turn out to be. And so, every Vesak, do I get reminded of it all over again.
Everything teaches. But only after we stop calling it “obvious.”
V Over Tea 
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