Form over substance. Toyota, and other Japanese companies, are living the substance of Lean and TPS. Most other companies implement the form and hope they magically get where Toyota is without any additional effort. Same goes for Agile and any other management "philosophy".
Yes, it's the essence of cargo culting. The tech world is also full of this stuff. The number of small companies that I've seen that implement the Spotify development team structure is pretty tragic.
People are always looking for silver bullets and the industry is rife with examples of this kind of thing.
Even better, "we're like Google" except they give you a blank stare where you ask about the 20% time, free food, compensation or where they hire from. Turns out it's all bootcamp/local wages no stock, no 20% time. But hey, they have beanbag chairs!
