What Chanakya’s Oil Lamp Teaches About True Leadership

Today I want to share an incident from the life of Chanakya.

Chanakya was a strategist,

The author of the Arthashastra.

He shared strategies on business,

Politics,

Strategy and he was the advisor to the Chandragupt Maurya kingdom,

To the emperors thousands of years ago,

Around 2000 years,

2300 years ago.

One day he was working,

Chanakya was working in the night he had an oil lamp called a diya,

Like a candle,

A diya has some ghee and he was doing some work and it was dark as he was working,

One of his friends comes up to him and he looks at his friend and he turns off the light and he has another diya,

Another lamp beside it and he looks at that and he says now you can start speaking and his friend is very surprised,

He says these two lamps look exactly the same,

Why did you turn off the first lamp and put on the second and Chanakya says no,

These two lamps look the same but they are not the same,

His friend is surprised,

He says what do you mean,

He says the first lamp which I have,

The oil in it is paid for by the state,

So the state pays for it,

The kingdom pays for it and that time I was doing work of the kingdom,

Of the state,

When you have come the second lamp I am paying for this lamp,

The oil in this lamp,

The ghee in this lamp is paid for by me because you have come here,

You are my friend,

We might discuss something,

We might joke,

We might laugh,

So why should I use the money,

The lamp of the state for my personal affairs and this is such a powerful incident because it shows the value of ethics,

It shows that even when it comes to a lamp you need to be ethical,

If you are doing personal work do not use the funds of the state or your company and this applies even today in the modern world,

It is so important to be honest,

To be ethical,

I will share two instances with you one of them is of a company called Enron,

Enron was a very large multi-billion dollar company but because they were unethical they started committing frauds,

They went bust and they lost billions of dollars,

People lost their jobs because they were unethical and another case is from India there was a company called Satyam and its founder was Ramalinga Raju and Satyam was a tech giant again worth billions of dollars,

People trusted them,

They had a lot of employees but what happened is they started committing frauds and what were the frauds they started committing,

It started small they would have fake invoices,

They would fake how much cash they have and as things started it snowballing and that is what happens when you are dishonest,

When you are unethical one thing leads to another and things start snowballing,

In fact the founder was caught he was sent to jail,

He was seven years in jail,

They lost billions of dollars,

People lost jobs and he made a statement,

He said when I was doing this it was like riding a hungry tiger I had to keep feeding it because if I stopped feeding it and I got down the tiger would eat me up,

What does this mean,

Because he was doing unethical things he had to keep doing it over and over and over again and this happens with everybody who takes the wrong path,

Who is unethical,

Look at Bernie Madoff,

So many cases and what can you learn from this,

There are powerful lessons,

The first is be ethical in the smallest of things,

Chanakya even with the lamp he was ethical because if you are ethical with the smallest of things those values will transpire into the big things,

You cannot say I will be unethical in the small things and ethical in the big things,

It's a value system,

If you are ethical here you will be ethical there,

The second is things snowball,

Things snowball,

If you are unethical in one area you will be unethical in other areas,

So it is very important to bring in the values of ethics and trust and it's more important in today's business world and the third is as a leader your actions speak louder than words,

If you are unethical everybody around you,

Your team members,

People in your organization,

People in your house will think it is okay to be unethical and that becomes like a disease,

If everybody around you is unethical you cannot work,

You cannot perform,

You cannot excel,

So bring this energy of ethics and trust,

So the next time you see a light,

You see a candle,

Think how you can be ethical,

How you can be trustworthy,

How you can be reliable because in today's world this becomes a real superpower,

This is UK's Chabria sending you lots of love,

Lots of joy,

Lots of blessings,

See you soon.