## Imitating the Rituals Shafer invokes the cargo cult: "isolated people covet another group's resources and advanced technology but are unable to understand or obtain it," so they "conduct rituals imitating the outward and observable behavior of those possessing the desired wealth" — building "mock airstrips, constructing nonfunctioning radios with coconuts, and holding daily standup meetings." The sting is in that last item: "In the proper form, these things are all potentially useful, but without understanding they just seem incredibly wasteful." ## Agile as Cargo Cult "Sometimes Agile adoptions are like a cargo cult: a collection of misunderstood practices with few or no results." For many adoptions, "the only change is that people start to have a daily meeting and stop writing documentation, expecting unicorns to magically deliver high-quality products." His tell: **"the most Agile teams never really trumpet that fact, and teams that decree Agile loudly are rarely Agile."** ## The Cure: Understanding Over Imitation Progress comes from "honest assessment and reflective improvement, realizing you are on a path with direction but without a destination." Misquoting Bruce Lee's "absorb what is useful, discard what is useless" to mean "discard what you don't understand" is the trap; the best teams "cultivate a learning culture" and "know other people have answers they don't have yet." Practices without understanding are coconut radios — the opposite of [[Mandate Rarely Changes Behavior]]'s "start doing it" with genuine intent.