Cargo Cult
You can copy every visible detail of a successful practice and still miss the thing that made it work.
Today, cargo-culting means copying meetings, tools, words, or habits without checking what actually made them work.
A stand-up helps only if a blocker reaches someone who can act—and the work changes.
9:00AM · stand in a circle · recite three updates
Example: a daily stand-upThe mistakeResemblance is treated as evidence of causation.
“They do this, and they succeed” quietly becomes “they succeed because they do this.”
Same lane. Different city.
Two cities copy the same protected bike lane from a place where cycling works. Only one of them builds the network that makes the lane worth using.
A protected lane is built along a main road.
Both ends meet safe routes to schools, shops, and the station.
A parent with a child can finish the trip without ever leaving protection.
Ordinary journeys move from cars to bikes.
The same protected lane is built along a main road.
After 600 metres the lane stops where four lanes of traffic merge.
Only confident cyclists will risk the gap, so most people never start.
The city concludes that its residents simply do not cycle.
The lane was never the engine. It was one visible piece of a network that let an ordinary person make an ordinary trip without needing courage.
Look beneath the ritual.
Choose a familiar practice. First notice what an outsider can copy. Then switch on the x-ray to reveal the mechanism that must exist, plus the observation that could prove it.
Everyone stands for 15 minutes.
A successful team meets every morning, stands in a circle, and answers three questions. Another team reproduces the format exactly.
Before you look — what has to be true for this to work?
A fixed time, standing posture, and three-part script
These details are memorable and observable. They may help, but none guarantees that a reported problem will be removed.
The result is being attributed to the visible form. Turn on the x-ray to inspect the missing link.
Evidence test: After the meeting is introduced, do blockers spend fewer hours waiting for action?
Imitation is not the problem.
People learn by copying. A borrowed practice becomes cargo-culting when resemblance replaces understanding and feedback.
The explanation ends with authority.
“A famous company does it” tells you where the practice came from, not why it should work in your conditions.
No failure condition is allowed.
If a bad result only produces stricter ritual (more meetings, more metrics, more ceremony), the practice cannot teach you that it is wrong.
Compliance becomes the outcome.
The team counts attendance, templates, and completed forms while the intended result (faster decisions, safer work, better learning) goes unmeasured.
Sensible borrowing is different. Copying can be a cheap first experiment when you state the hoped-for mechanism, check whether its supporting conditions exist, and change or stop the practice when the evidence disagrees.
Borrow the practice as a hypothesis.
You do not need a perfect theory before trying something. You do need a way for reality to correct you. Name the result, trace the path, check the conditions, and decide in advance what evidence would make you adapt or stop.
What result are we actually trying to change?
By what path should this practice cause that result?
Which conditions made the path work elsewhere?
What will we observe, and when will we stop?
Why people called it a “cargo cult.”
The familiar explanation begins with military planes, a sudden flood of manufactured goods, and what happened when both disappeared.
Planes arrived carrying unfamiliar quantities of goods.
During the Second World War, American and Japanese forces built airstrips across Melanesia, and transport planes delivered vast quantities of manufactured goods. Local communities watched the supplies appear from the sky.
The soldiers left, and the deliveries stopped.
In a few communities, people then built ceremonial airstrips, wooden radios, and imitation drills. Outsiders read these rituals as attempts to call the planes back by copying the visible parts of the supply system.
Outsiders turned those scenes into a label.
Colonial writer Norris Mervyn Bird printed the phrase “cargo cult” in 1945, and the vivid airplane story became shorthand for copying a visible setup while missing the system behind it.
Copy the mechanism, not merely its costume.
A good practice can explain how it connects action to outcome, and allows the outcome to prove it wrong.