ines and airmen were trained by the thousands and sent to the south pacific. The indigenous peoples living on these islands were totally awed when their normally placid skies resounded with the roar of aircraft engines, and their seas trembled not just with the massive whale, but with a ship's propellers.After the war, when the abrupt flow of goods just as suddenly disappeared, "cargo cults" of islanders began imitating the rituals surrounding the influx of goods during the war. They set up fires along small replica bamboo or dirt runways. They designated "radio operators" to handle imaginary radio traffic and waited for more goods to arrive from the sky. Some went so far as to build bamboo control-towers, complete with radio aerials fashioned from vines. They got all the superficial appearances correct, yet the planes didn't return. Jon Frum, a cargo cult hero, is still awaited on Vanuatu. 5It is heart-wrenching to consider the futility of human hopes, in cargo cults and in our own world as well. Built to understand and to learn, we are also capable of self-deception, denial and blindness where our wishes are concerned.There are any number of reasons that managers can be comfortable with things as they are long after the reality of external events should have made them ill at ease. With a little denial, the stench of a conflagration in corporate headquarters can easily be taken for a cook-out down the block, even when a fire-alarm is ringing in our ears."These days it may seem impossible that any manager could be so inwardly focused as to believe that their company is insulated from change or that the skills and markets relevant to today's success will be identically relevant tomorrow. Yet the front pages of the popular press are full of accounts of former flagship companies now apparently struggling to stay afloat -- Digital Equipment Corporation, Wang Corporation and Sears, among others.""Sears counted on its excellent store sites, i...
