Cargo cult
Etymology
From anthropology: after wartime airbases vanished, some Pacific island communities reportedly built mock runways and towers hoping to summon back the "cargo" the planes had brought. The physicist Richard Feynman popularized "cargo cult science" for research that copies the look of rigor. (Popular use simplifies the real history.)
noun · /KAR-goh kult/
Imitating the outward forms of something successful while missing the substance that made it work.
What it names
Why copying the rituals of a great company or process rarely reproduces the results — you’ve mimicked the surface, not the cause.
Example
Holding stand-ups and using the same tools was cargo cult agile — the ceremonies without the culture.
Related idea
A simulacrum is a copy that stands in for the real thing; a cargo cult is a copy that fails to.