“It Didn’t Work” Is Not a Diagnosis
“Don’t bother. We’ve tried this before, and it didn’t work.”
Heard that one before? Of course you have. And to be fair, plenty of times, that statement is dead right.
Take Segway, for example. “We’ve tried new personal transport devices before, and they never catch on.” Urban planners nailed it. Or Concorde: “Commercial supersonic flights aren’t viable”, They said. After decades of deafening noise, sky-high costs, and logistical nightmares, it not only proved the critics right—they stopped flying entirely. And do you ever wear your Google Glasses? “We’ve tried augmented reality glasses before, and people won’t wear them.” Well, they were dead right. It flopped. Twice.
But hold on. Pause for a second. Imagine you’re pitching a new framework, and the CEO hits you with the same line: “Don’t bother. We’ve tried this before, and it didn’t work.” Now the entire boardroom is looking at you, waiting for a comeback. Or you suggest a great new diet idea to your wife—risking the accidental launch of World War III over a quinoa suggestion—only to watch your good intentions crash and burn with a shrug: “Tried this before, didn’t work.”
So I learned there’s only one correct answer:
“Guess what? You’re right. It didn’t.”
Because I’ve seen it firsthand. Over and over again.
A national bank that rolled out a framework, only to axe everyone involved a few years later. My friend trying guru-diet number ‘two hundred twenty-eight’, only to regain the kilos faster than a teenager can inhale a pizza. My wife complaining about standups at work where she learns more about her colleague’s psychologically deranged cat than about her actual work.
They are all right. It didn’t work. Because it didn’t fix the thing that actually kept those people awake at night. So the real question isn’t what failed. It’s why.
When something fails—whether it’s a framework, a diet, a cultural shift, or even a shiny new device—most people look at the what.
What did we try? What went wrong? What did it cost us?
But that’s surface-level thinking. The real insight lies in the why.
When a transformation fails, the failure usually isn’t in the method itself. It’s in the mismatch between the solution and what people truly need, or are actually willing to do. So when someone says, “We’ve tried this before, and it didn’t work,” they’re right. But then comes the follow-up: “Now let’s figure out why, so we don’t make the same mistake in a different outfit.”
And so, our journey begins. To understand why we keep screwing up when trying to change the world around us.
Now, I’m a storyteller. So that’s exactly what I’ll do: I’ll show you the problem, how it manifests, and how to fix it—through stories. From Frisian shepherds being chased by dogs the size of baby rhinos to airline pilots crashing planes in favor of coffee. Every absurd story is something I’ve witnessed firsthand.
So here we go: For the new leaders out there. For leaders stuck training new leaders. For all who failed another diet. For everyone who has ever sat in a meeting thinking if we are beta-testing stupidity.
And for anyone who actually wants change to work.
Story | The Mission Statement Messiah
“Everybody in the meeting room. Now!”
His voice boomed through the office.
We looked up, slightly taken aback by the cyclone that had just blown in. A tall man in a dark blue, tailor-made suit stormed past us like a whirlwind on a mission.
Meet Vincent.
Vincent was the local high-potential—the man destined for greatness. The guy with a golden keycard granting him instant access to the 54th floor whenever the board of directors of this 185,000-employee behemoth needed him. For now, though, he had exactly four people reporting to him.
And one of them was me.
Five minutes later, Vincent adjusted his seat, making sure he towered over the rest of us.
“We need a mission statement for our department. And we will create it together.”
I guess “our department” meant the four of us. Housed in a windowless basement. Cool stuff.
He looked at us with the unhinged enthusiasm of a golden retriever about to chase a frisbee. We blinked at him in disbelief. Two days before our deadline. All hands on deck. We were drowning in work, trying to get everything out into the field—and he wanted a meeting to discuss something nobody thought necessary? Sure. Guess we’d be pulling another all-nighter. Easier than starting a discussion on whether this was the right moment to craft a mission statement.
For two hours, we brainstormed, rephrased, analyzed customer needs, defined our primary purpose, and desperately tried to come up with a team name that didn’t sound lame. Then, we wrestled with a plotter for an hour—sacrificing three trees’ worth of paper—just to print the damn thing in the correct format.
By the time we were finally making coffee to survive the night ahead, our mission statement was stuck above the door with cellophane tape. I must have looked like I had just watched an entire colony of penguins get devoured by a lion, because my colleague patted me on the back and smirked.
“Don’t mind Vincent. He went to a management course yesterday.”
Ah. That explained everything. The glazed-over stare. The sudden bursts of motivational jargon. The haunted look of a man who’d just been indoctrinated for eight straight hours.
Turns out, nothing screams leadership like Scotch tape and recycled buzzwords.
Clue #2 | Action does not equal Impact
Ever heard of a RACI? Well, you probably encountered a Cargo Cult. A new kind of diet? Cargo Cult. Energizers at work? Cargo Cult.
Looking back, I can only conclude that this mission statement from my manager was my first-ever encounter.
Here we uncover the same old patterns of corporate leadership: Vincent wasn’t a bad manager, but he had fallen into the classic trap of blindly imitating leadership behaviors without understanding their purpose. He thought creating a mission statement was a leadership move. He saw senior executives do it. He learned about it in his course. So he did it too—without stopping to ask if it actually solved anything.
This is where we begin: recognizing the absurdity in what we do, questioning it, and finally learning how to break free from the cycle of well-meaning dysfunction.
A Story About Faith-Based Mimicry.
And how to fix it.
Food for Thought | Shu Ha Ri
A high-level manager posed a question: “What’s the difference between hollow imitation and Shu Ha Ri? And what’s wrong with copying what works for others?”
At first glance, it sounds like no problem at all. What actually happens is corporate comedy. We enroll our high potentials in a two-day course and pretend that’s development. They leave the examination room grinning like a kid who found a $100 bill, passing theory with flying colors. Ready to take on the world, they head straight back to HR, ready to crush it!
Except, they are not.
You see, copying? Fine. Great, even. When you’re under the watchful eye of a master. But here’s the problem with the way we grow our new leaders: Shu Ha Ri takes decades. Not two days. No matter how slick the training. No matter how fancy the certificate.
So stop it. Stop sending people to six-hour courses where they hug sheep (or whatever it is they do there), with no real mentoring to guide the Shu and Ha phases. Stop asking for certificates that prove you can do a breaststroke on dry land. Because that’s just mimicking without understanding. And nobody’s giving out medals for that.
So today, start mentoring your high potentials. And for the love of all things sacred, stop form-over-function behavior. (More on Shu Ha Ri in Clue 12)
The Hidden Costs of Superficial Transformation
What’s the big deal, anyway? Borrowing ideas without a proper blueprint—who cares? Laugh it off, call it human stupidity, and move on with your life.
But there’s a deeper problem lurking beneath it.
When we fail, we don’t just abandon the approach. We replace it with a new one. My shelves are overflowing with diet books. And don’t get me started on frameworks: they change faster than my son’s mood when he’s high on sugar.
All this effort demands a massive investment. I’m not talking about the money that Dave-from-accounting pays to Weight Watchers, right before sneaking donuts into the Monday meeting. I mean energy. I’ve seen firsthand how long it takes—and how much it drains us—to admit we’ve been doing it all wrong.
Studies back this up. A well known example is Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s grief cycle in organizational change: we go through denial, anger, bargaining, and depression before we even get to acceptance. And with every failure, the resistance to new change grows. Meanwhile, the problem doesn’t go away.
Now, we don’t need to fix everything. That would take forever. But we should dismantle the ones that drain resources or—worse—fuel resistance to fixing the real problems. The problems that keep you up at night.
The Cult of Clueless Coaches
Let’s shake people out of their complacency. Make them see the mess they’re blindly maintaining. I’m calling out the absurdity, exposing the consequences, and making it impossible for people to keep pretending it’s fine. I mean to break the cycle, force uncomfortable truths into the open, and challenge both the believers and the so-called experts leading them.
It’s not gentle, and it’s not about playing nice. It’s about rattling the cage so hard that people have to do something about it.
Why? Because most people don’t connect the dots between these feel-good rituals and their real-world fallout. They slip under the radar. They don’t set off alarms. No sirens, no flashing lights. They just hum along in the background, quietly screwing things up, while under the surface it’s a slow-motion train wreck.
Grumpy employees drowning in nonsense, while leadership tries to “boost morale” with an employee happiness survey or—God help us—a ping-pong table. And the poor, frazzled dog owner getting yanked across the pavement at dawn by a furry tornado. Or the railway company, where a black hole of transparency leaves 300 developers wandering in the fog.
Challenging those trapped in their own idiocracy is just the beginning. I call out the teachers. The dog whisperer. The agile coach. The consultant. Someone who looks the part and says the right words. Because what if they haven’t got a clue what they’re doing? That they are just another cog in the machine
That’s when the consequences go nuclear.
Shadow Puppet Management for Professionals
Challenge your assumptions and question your own behaviors and beliefs.
When managers blindly copy frameworks like Prince II, Scrum, SAFe, or Lean—without understanding why those frameworks worked in the first place—they don’t solve anything. It looks like leadership, but it’s just projection. And it usually makes things worse—creating new processes to follow, endless meetings to attend, and mountains of paperwork to fill out.
When parents blindly copy best practices from trendy blogs or self-help books without understanding why those approaches work for these specific families, they tend to worsen the situation. They add fuel to the fire by piling on extra rules, drowning themselves in a flood of contradictory advice.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Not us! We’re too smart for that. You won’t find it here.” Well, think again.
SO start scanning for the ritual-circus and get to work fixing it.
Story | Echoes of the Metal Gods
The natives watched in awe as food poured out of the bellies of the silver beasts, and when they looked up, dozens of aluminum birds swooped down on their island. The chief, wearing nothing but a feathered hat, could only think, “These must be gods from heaven.”
Until that very moment, the island was blessed, and life was perfect. The natives wore reed skirts, foraged for berries, and worshipped the old spirits who lived in the volcano.
Life couldn’t get any better.
But, as always, change was coming. The Japanese decided the island was a prime spot for world domination, rolling in on warships to set up hangars, barracks, and air traffic control towers. The planes came, and the islanders, eager to impress their new gods, showed them the best spots in exchange for canned food.
Then, the plot twisted again.
The Americans booted out the Japanese, who trashed everything on their way out. But the new gods rebuilt it all, and soon, cargo-filled planes were landing again.
History loves repeating itself.
When Japan surrendered, the Americans packed up and left.
But the tribe’s medicine man, thinking he’d cracked the code, had a plan: “Let’s do what the foreigners did.” They cleared a path through the jungle, crafted planes out of banana leaves, stuck coconuts on their heads as makeshift headphones, and tied bamboo together for binoculars. They were absolutely convinced this would work: the planes would come back and prosperity would land from the sky.
And so, they waited.
And they wait still.
Clue #3 | Blind copying creates Cargo Cults, not competence.
Someone tries to solve a problem by copying what worked for others—without a clue why it worked—just hoping the same results will magically appear.
It’s a classic case of people giving the thumbs-up at the start, only to be left scratching their heads when things get worse. Now, instead of solving the original mess, we’ve stacked dysfunction on dysfunction. Congratulations: the chaos is officially layered.
People often mimic strategies or behaviors they don’t fully understand, creating a cycle of dysfunction. Employees start grumbling about skyrocketing workloads, drowning in pointless paperwork, trapped in endless, soul-sucking meetings, and following processes that feel like they were dreamed up by Kafka during a fever. Recognize any of this? Welcome. You’ve just stumbled into your first Cargo Cult.
The ideas that spark these Cults often come from well-meaning seminars or are ripped straight from the highlight reels of friends. And guess what? We don’t even realize we’re doing it.
Now, are those corporate field trips and “lessons learned” a waste of time? Absolutely not. You should go to seminars. You should learn from your friends. But only if you’re solving a problem you actually understand. Otherwise, you’re just collecting stickers for a scrapbook labeled Innovation! while your colleagues quietly sets fire to their calendars.
So buckle up. We’re about to tour the wild, dysfunctional world of Cargo Cults—complete with familiar sights, surreal logic, and processes that make you wonder: Is anyone still driving the bus?
The Ping Pong Table Enigma
An example. Ever walked into a company lobby and seen a ping pong table, but no paddles or ball in sight? Or a foosball table where all you hear are loud grunts and the clatter of wooden players slamming into metal? Did you ever stop to wonder why it’s even there?
Maybe you didn’t—like I never did. But seeing something seemingly pointless or out of place should prompt you to question the intention behind it. Because chances are, you’ve just encountered our familiar friend.
Consider this: What effect does HR hope to create by placing a ping pong table in the lobby? Does that effect actually happen? If it does, is it directly caused by the ping pong table?
The questions raised about motivation—and whether the effect is even happening—highlight the importance of curiosity and critical thinking. It’s a call to stop and ask yourself: Why are things done the way they are?
The Cargo Cult Experience
What is that moment of realization when you sense something is off? Like when you realize the food your friend is avoiding to lose weight is actually a form of starvation, or when the HR department somehow manages to hire the wrong person for the wrong job – for the third time in a row?
It’s closely related to that “huh?” feeling. That moment when you step into another room, company, or country—and suddenly, everything’s upside down. It’s like you’re in a parallel universe, and what you thought was normal just went out the window.
Let me capture that exact turning point where awareness kicked in for me. I was hired by a company in India to dig into a catastrophic drop in software quality. What happened on the last day of my visit was the first in a series of eye-opening “Wait, what?” encounters that’ll give you a crash course in the kind of trap we all end up stumbling into.
Story | The Bangalore Traffic Paradox
“Why is that police officer making all that noise?”
Annoyed, I turned toward my colleagues. I wanted an explanation, and I wanted it now.
“Ah yes, sir,” one of the test leads replied. “He is directing traffic.” He gave me a look like he’d just solved a complex equation and was now patiently waiting for his Nobel Prize.
I watched the streets of Bangalore. A stampede of deranged elephants would’ve looked more in control than this traffic. I glanced back at my colleagues, not aware yet that this would be a long day. Not because of the work challenges, but because that day, I’d come to a startling realization that turned into this 300 page novel.
For now, I tried to filter the noise and focus on the question at hand: How do we raise the quality of the delivered products?
Three days earlier, all the testers in this very room, which was hot, humid and so full of spice it could’ve passed for a curry commercial, had wobbled their heads when asked if they understood the questioning attitude they should adopt. And they did. In theory. But to my complete frustration, they did nothing of the sort in practice. When the developer told them to go away, they simply ignored the bug. End of story.
At the back of the room, the test managers waited patiently for what I was about to say. Trying to cope with the heat, I ventilated my thoughts about the lack of progress. “Somehow, the testers don’t catch on,” I began.
“Yes, sir,” came the answer.
“Why do they accept all this nonsense the developers say?” I continued.
“Yes, sir,” the test lead said, smiling.
I was getting used to these polite reminders that I was stating the obvious, so I turned my attention to the police officer in the street below. He was young, smartly dressed in a black uniform, looking crisp and fresh despite the heat, blowing his whistle with such force I feared he’d swallow it. Behind him, in the shade of a small booth, was a man in a white uniform with a bushy gray beard, observing calmly.
After a few seconds of taking in the chaos, I said, “He is directing traffic?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But traffic is going in every direction except the one he’s indicating.”
“Aaaah, yes, sir! The drivers—they do not listen to him,” the test lead replied, as if this was the most normal thing in the world.
I was stunned. “So why is he making all that noise?”
“Ah yes, I can explain. He is directing traffic…”
Clue #4 | Rituals with zero impact are just noise with a dress code
See the bigger picture and realize what’s actually happening beneath the surface. Grasp the why behind the behavior—that’s the essence of understanding.
It took me a moment to process the conversation with my Indian colleagues. What I’d just witnessed wasn’t a miscommunication. It was pure symbolic behavior.
Welcome to our theater: where the motions are right, but nothing changes.
Nuts and Bolts
The Bangalore approach mimics a working system but lacks understanding of why it succeeds elsewhere. And to understand ourselves, we need to deconstruct the underlying logic of traffic management, the cultural and behavioral factors that make traffic officers effective, and the difference between blindly copying a solution and actually making it work.
Some context: Bangalore’s traffic jams are the stuff of legend—an urban endurance test that can turn a 5-kilometer commute into an hour-long meditation on the meaning of time.
A few core issues: The city’s infrastructure was designed for a fraction of today’s population, poorly planned intersections become bottlenecks, areas like Whitefield, Electronic City, and Outer Ring Road funnel thousands of tech workers to the same few roads, the Metro coverage is still limited, and monsoons turn already slow traffic into gridlock.
How does Great Britain handle a similar situation?
When traffic gets stuck due to an accident, roadblock, or malfunctioning traffic light, they use trained officers to manage flow, handle incidents, and clear the roads. So, the logic goes: Put a traffic officer at every junction in Bangalore. Problem solved.
Except… not really.
Why do traffic officers work in Great Britain? Well, social conditioning plays a huge role. From a young age, Brits are taught to obey authority figures—especially those in uniform.
But that’s not all. When everyone else obeys the officer, others follow suit. It’s basic human instinct: Humans follow the crowd. And last but not least, British drivers assume the officer knows what he is doing, and they can therefore manage the chaos better.
Now contrast that with Bangalore.
Drivers often ignore traffic officers due to cultural norms, road chaos, and skepticism about authority. With overwhelming congestion and informal rules, people rely on instinct, honking, gestures, and eye contact instead of formal direction. And when a few start ignoring the officer, others follow—triggering a chain reaction in which the officer becomes irrelevant.
Stupidity or Arrogance?
Typical, was the first thing I thought. Only a country with a colonial past would fall for something like this.
Yeah. Well. I was wrong.
Because I made the same mistake myself. Right there in that room, I set myself up for failure—without realizing it.
Here was my simplified train of thought.
When we have a potential quality problem in the Netherlands, we hire a tester. The tester points out the weak spots in the systems and the problem is solved. So naturally, in India, I did what the Dutch would do: hire a tester. But the results where nowhere to be found. No worries, though. I had the perfect fix: teach the testers how to test properly.
And there I was, staring at the mess I’d made, when it hit me: I’d taken the wrong turn. Did you catch it? I copied what had worked in the Netherlands, assuming it would work in India. Without understanding why it had worked in the first place.
In the Netherlands, challenging others is embedded in culture. If a developer does not fix a critical issue, we escalate to the Product Owner, Project Manager, or even the customer. Leadership is egalitarian and everyone has a voice. Which basically means every meeting ends up sounding like a family dinner where no one can agree on dessert, but everyone insists on having the last word anyway.
But in India developers are considered senior to testers. Because of the strong hierarchical culture, challenging your boss is not done.
So my solution – teaching testers more skills – completely missed the point. In the end, I was just copy-pasting a solution without understanding the culture that made it work. As a result, nothing had changed. The motions looked the same. But without the right context, I was just spinning my wheels.
When Pushing Won’t Work, Pivot
You’ve got to tear down the failed approach and rebuild it in a way that works within the actual culture. Adapt, or watch it burn. That’s the lesson. And it’s just as true for company cultures as it is for countries. Yes, even the culture at home.
So how did I fix it? In the end, I stopped telling testers to challenge their superiors. Instead, I trusted their expertise and asked for full transparency on issues. For the first time, we had a clear picture of what was actually broken.
Then we brought the issues—not to the testers, not even the developers—but straight to local management. That’s where decisions were made. Developers got top-down assignments with deadlines we agreed on.
Quality guaranteed. Mission accomplished.
And did it work? Oh, you bet! Weeks after launch, Apple rated us 4.9 out of 5 for quality, usability, and stability. Still holding steady at 4.7 three years later. Not too shabby for what was once a bug-infested mess, held together by duct tape and developer prayers.
The India team and I tackled plenty of successful projects together since. And me? I got a much-needed lesson in humility. Turns out no one is immune to copy-paste coaching—not even me.
I was onto something. But spotting copycat strategies takes practice. So let’s set the stage for a deeper exploration of how this behavior manifests in organizations, guiding you toward understanding how it actually works.
Story | High-Speed Delays
A wave of applause thundered through the room. Management clapped with the fervor of a crowd witnessing a once-in-a-lifetime speech—I almost thought I’d gone back in time to hear Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his “I Have a Dream” address.
But of course, I hadn’t.
We were packed into a large auditorium. Life-sized models of high-speed trains gleamed under the spotlights behind us. Almost 300 developers beamed at each other, clapping backs, celebrating what they thought was another team victory.
We had just finished presenting the quarterly plans, and I couldn’t help but notice the engineers’ posture as they confidently voted “Best plan ever!”.
Wait—how does that match the massive delay I was supposed to fix?
Investigations proved that nobody had actually delivered anything from the plans they were so confident about. And nobody had asked. So the next day, I walked into the office, and asked why nobody ever challenged the teams?
That’s when the department heads froze.
“There’s nothing in SAFe that holds people accountable for their confidence vote,” they told me.
“True,” I said. “But does this mean you don’t want people to be responsible for what they promise?”
Ten pairs of eyes stared at me like I’d grown a second head. “We’re happy with the high confidence votes,” one manager said, waving me off.
And just like that, I was out.
Clue #5 | Confidence Without Accountability Is a Cult, Not a Plan
When I asked why they chose this framework, the response was simple: ‘Because it worked for a large banking company that is similar to our organizational structure.’ And that’s a direct quote from the previous mentioned head of department. A floor packed with development teams and no value delivered is what happens when you blindly mimic someone else’s success without understanding why it works in the first place.
Let’s break it down. The bank nails it with a complex banking app: secure, intuitive, and beautifully designed. Their secret? A bottom-up approach called SAFe. Management states what they want, and developers figure out how to deliver.
The managers of the railway company loved that. So, they adopted SAFe, complete with confidence voting to check if developers believe in what they’re committing to.
But here’s the twist.
Developers started seeing the confidence vote as a magic shield. A way to dodge questions from managemers. And it worked. No one dared question the sky-high confidence votes. Not even when delivery was nonexistent. So, the show went on. Management clapped along, convinced they’d cracked the code. They copied the Banks confidence vote—but left out accountability, feedback loops, and ownership. Sound familiar? You might have a framework charade brewing in your organization.
A Dose of Reality
I’d decided to part ways with the railway company despite the fact that I managed to spark something in middle management. Disruption doesn’t always lead to success. But it plants seeds.
“If we’d known what you were bringing, we would’ve handled it differently.” was the hiring manager’s goodbye words.
Storytelling about natives in the jungle building bamboo planes helps others to see problems from a different perspective. But it doesn’t fix anything on it’s own. Cargo Cult behaviors are deeply embedded—in organizations, and in ourselves. Dislodging them takes more than a few good analogies. You’ll need persistence. You’ll need repetition. And yes, you’ll need to become a part-time missionary for change, because a lot of folks are perfectly comfortable in their own dysfunction.
So brace yourself for failure. A lot of it.You don’t win every battle. Even with all the knowledge in the world. Each company has its own pace, and forcing change doesn’t work. Sometimes, the smartest move is to step back. Let time do its thing. I moved on.
Food for Thought | The Cosplay Cocktail
Putting on a tuxedo to fix a plumbing leak, throwing around buzzwords, and hoping no one notices the pipes are still bursting. I sometimes think it is humans most favourite pastime.
Let’s use a tongue-in-cheek checklist to spot the early warning signs of dysfunction in your company. A lighthearted, slightly ridiculous way that you can think of as your Cargo Cult Starter Pack.
It’s meant to be funny. But like all good jokes, it’s also meant to make you squirm a little. Because recognizing the absurdity is the first step—before the deeper analysis, the PowerPoints, and whatever fresh problem your next transformation workshop uncovers.
Cargo Cult Cocktail = CE x SW x WB
Where:
CE = number of employees actively complaining
SW = number of blank stares or shoulder shrugs when you ask, “Why?”
WB = number of employees who throw up their hands and say, “Why bother?”
Got enough of these ingredients, you might just have yourself the perfect mix for corporate nonsense.
When Looking Busy Replaces Being Useful
If Cargo Cults were just another corporate circus act, I’d hand a this document to my CEO, call it a day, and move on with my life. If they were only making Bangalore traffic worse, I wouldn’t even blink.
Except—it’s not.
People accept nonsense without scrutiny, whether it’s at work, with pet ownership, or during promotions. It’s everywhere. Diets. Instagram. And yes, self-help books like this one. Copy. Paste. Problem solved. Except, of course, it’s not.
Let’s do a quick scan of people mindlessly copying trends or behaviors, thinking they’ve unlocked some secret formula. People that completely miss the bigger picture, adopt flashy practices, shiny tools, or trendy habits they believe lead to success, while skipping the hard stuff behind the curtain.
Push yourself towards self-awareness with the help of these examples, boost your critical thinking and authenticity, instead of blindly following trends or copying someone else’s moves. Question whether you’re actually getting to the root of what you’re trying to achieve. Go beyond the surface. Do the work. And for the love of all things logical, make actual progress in your life—and maybe help others do the same.
Quick Scan
The “Instagram Relationship”
Couples post endless #CoupleGoals photos—romantic vacations, cute selfies, anniversary posts—but behind the scenes, they barely communicate. They assume that acting like a perfect couple online makes them a perfect couple.
The “Hustle Culture” Copycat
Someone sees successful entrepreneurs waking up at 4 AM, doing ice baths, and grinding 16-hour days. So they copy the routine, expecting success to follow. But without the strategy, skills, or network, they just end up tired and burned out.
Fitness Theater
People buy expensive gym gear, meal prep containers, and supplements, thinking they’re on the road to fitness. But they never actually exercise or change habits—they just look the part.
The “Manifestation Without Effort” Trap
Someone reads The Secret and decides to just “visualize” success—money, love, happiness. They meditate on wealth but never build skills, apply for jobs, or take action. They mimic the mindset but skip the effort.
The Parenting Trap
Parents see “smart” kids in Montessori schools and assume buying wooden toys, banning screens, and letting kids run wild will make them little geniuses—without engaging in hands-on teaching or critical thinking.
The Minimalist Aesthetic
People declutter their homes, buy beige furniture, and arrange everything “just so,” believing that minimalism = peace. But if they never address the actual stress in their life, all they did was redecorate.
The “Therapy-Talk Without Growth” Trend
People throw around words like “boundaries,” “self-care,” and “trauma,” copying the language of growth—but they don’t actually do the hard work of self-reflection, emotional regulation, or change.
The “Money Mindset” Delusion
Some think that acting rich—buying designer brands, leasing fancy cars, living beyond their means—will make them rich. In reality, they just go into debt trying to look wealthy instead of building financial security.
The “Zen Lifestyle” Illusion
Someone buys incense, meditates now and then, and does yoga in designer leggings, thinking they’re enlightened. But they’re still reactive and stressed because they never practiced actual mindfulness.
The “Exotic Diet Copycat”
Someone sees celebrities doing keto, paleo, or gluten-free and assumes that’s the key to health—even if they don’t need it. They follow the diet religiously, but have no clue why it works—or if it’s even for them.
Clue #6 | Copying the outer layers of success won’t get you results—only the costume
When you imitate success without understanding the logic behind it, you’re not importing excellence. You’re importing confusion. It might look right from a distance—same job titles, same daily stand-ups, same glossy diagrams pinned to the walls. But without understanding why those things worked somewhere else, all you’ve built is theater. Not transformation. Context matters. Culture matters. Cause and effect really matter. And if you don’t? You get baffled testers, failed diets, ignored traffic cops, and entire teams performing Agile karaoke. They mouth the lyrics without the faintest idea what the song means. The cargo might look like it’s on the way, but trust me: those banana-leaf airplanes are never taking off.
Now that we know what to look for, I want to zoom in on one particular flavor of Cargo Cult behavior: Marketing.
Most people know an ad is just that—an illusion designed to sell a dream. But Cargo Cults? That’s different. People genuinely believe that going through the motions will produce real results. Even when it doesn’t. So let’s explore the thin line between constructed myths and unconscious self-deception. Because when the marketeers manage to convince us that the ritual works? That’s when things get really interesting.
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