Cargo cult start-ups and cargo cult agility...

Adding a foosball in your lobby won't make you a startup company anymore than building wooden planes recreated the flow of American goods in Guinea sixty years ago. - Silberzahn

Cargo Cult

A superstitious belief that practicing rituals or adopting certain practices will bring in the desired results. Often used in the context of Agile and Digitalization. Companies keen on seeing the lofty goals of agility and ditalization, mimic the practices (Hiring thousands of software programmers doesn't make you a software company -- example Nokia, which failed to make the transition from hardware to software; another example is hiring tens of Agile consultants, Coaches and practicing Agile rituals hoping to reimagine a new world of rapid feedback and value delivery!) 

"Soon after WWII, anthropologists in New Guinea noticed an unusual phenomenon: tribes deep in the interior of the country were building full-sized ritual airfields and airplanes out of bamboo, grass, etc. 

Anthropologists soon discovered that withdrawal of military forces had created a scarcity of modern technological goods, and the tribes, under the influence of so-called “Cargo Cult prophets”, were converting communities’ desires for these possessions into the external forms that had brought them in the past. 

The hope that these prophets shared with their followers was that if the correct external forms were present, the actual goods associated with them would arrive." - Forbes.

Effectuation

Effectuation is the the processes of opportunity identification and new venture creation...

https://philippesilberzahneng.wordpress.com/2017/10/16/effectuation-how-entrepreneurs-really-think-and-act/

Transformation - distinguishing between strategy and execution

• One of the worst mistakes of transformation is distinguishing between strategy and execution.
• Strategy is designed by the executive management in collaboration with premier consulting firm, and Execution is delegated to second-rung consulting firm, as an after thought.
•  The strategy thus is a romantic and mechanistic conception. 
• It soon turns out to be - "Our transformation strategy is perfectly clear, but we had a big execution problem",
• This leads to stalling of transformations in large companies and causes a strong push from the top management and strong tensions within the middle management.
• The strategy is not executed because it is not a true reflection of the capabilities of the organization. 
• If strategy execution is a problem, then execution is a strategic issue that strategic thinking has wrongfully ignored.
• To distinguish Strategy from Execution is to exempt top management of any responsibility in the transformation. 

Courtesy: Philippe Silberzahneng

Entrepreneurial Posture

• Employees are bombarded with messages praising the entrepreneurial posture. Innovate! Get started! Be brave! Accept to make mistakes! Be like Google! Take the plunge! There are 3 problems associated with this:
• This is a bad prescription, since hoping for everyone to become an entrepreneur is a fantasy.
•  It is counterproductive. Creative Chaos is not conducive to activity at all levels. 
• The entrepreneurial imperative is stressful and humiliating. Employees are already overworked and immersed in everyday problems, under pressure for results. Not everybody can be a superhero.
• Entrepreneurial mindset is indeed helpful, to put organization back in motion. 
• There is a need to abandon the super-hero connotations associated with Entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs are ordinary mortals, with a deep affinity towards partnership, collaboration to do new and useful things.

Courtesy: Philippe Silberzahneng