The Boot: 2025 Issue
Hey Businesses, we think you should quit…
BREAKING THE (HIRING) BARGAIN
Companies spent the past few years ghosting applicants, running fake job listings, and turning hiring into a slow, opaque mess. Now it’s catching up to them.
Years of impersonal rejections and résumé black holes have taught a generation not to trust the system. Candidates don’t expect fairness anymore so it’s no surprise they’re retaliating or bending the rules in return. In 2025, that’s evolved into full-blown hiring fraud: deepfake interviews, stand-ins doing the talking, even people accepting offers they never intend to take.
When employers treat hiring like an algorithmic black box applicants naturally start playing their own games.
$660B
Global annual cost of resume fraud for employers (includes fake credentials, exaggerated experience, and identity scams).
Source: Checkiteasy / Business.com
So, what now?
You can’t fix this with stricter screening alone. To rebuild trust, fix the process: kill ghost jobs, close feedback loops, and cut the timeline. If you want candidates to show up, start by showing up for them.
BETRAYING YOUR BRAND DNA
There’s nothing customers hate more than a bait-and-switch. And lately, brands are torching trust by making moves that directly contradict the values and identity they’ve spent years (and millions) building.
When brands suddenly sideline their values—chasing savings, hype, or investor approval—consumers feel betrayed. It’s 2025, your customers aren’t kicking back while you go back on your promises, they’re abandoning you and they’re not going quietly.
55%
of consumers say they’ll never return to a brand that betrays their trust (60% for Gen Z).
Source: Adobe/Accenture
So, what now?
Treat your brand promise like infrastructure, not marketing. When it breaks, everything cracks: trust, loyalty, even pricing power. Before your next pivot, ask: will this hold up under consumer scrutiny and fit with our brand narrative?
DISCIPLINING YOUR WAY TO DISENGAGEMENT
Forced attrition through stack ranking. RTO mandates. Electronic and productivity surveillance. We’re seeing a renaissance of fear-based management, where leaders respond to uncertainty by clamping down instead of leveling up.
But nothing stifles employee engagement and innovation like a workplace ruled by paranoia. Fear tactics may drive compliance in the short-term, but it never fuels the commitment, creativity, or culture that you’ll need to solve your next big problem.
“Contrary to what leaders like Zuckerberg and Musk believe, instilling fear in employees actually hurts a company's profitability in the long run… The feelings of uncertainty that job cuts engender end up paralyzing businesses instead of turbocharging them.”
Source: Business Insider
So, what now?
Leading through uncertainty isn’t about cutting costs at all costs. Your people are your greatest competitive advantage - and when you offer clarity, trust, and the space to contribute without fear, they’ll help solve what no mandate can. That’s how you build real resilience.
MISTAKING METRICS AS MANDATES
Basing your toughest decisions on metrics without stopping to ask what they actually mean isn’t strategy or leadership. It’s intellectual autopilot.
This data delusion measures what’s easy instead of what matters—like what actually drives loyalty, brand equity, or morale. In the end, decisions made on bad or shallow data lead to products people don't want and culture strategies no one believes in.
77%
of leaders admit to relying on dashboards and only sometimes or rarely question the data they receive, despite 67% expressing concern that over-reliance risks missing critical opportunities.
Source: TheyDo
So, what now?
Treat data like a clue rather than a conclusion. Ask: what assumptions are baked into these numbers? What might we be missing? The smartest strategies come from leaders who question the story their data is telling to discern the best path forward.
PRESERVING
BROKEN MODELS
Tariffs are showing and deepening the cracks of how a lot of business models were designed—and the lack of evolution that’s happened. Instead of investigating those cracks, many companies are scrambling to preserve them.
Price hikes, SKU cuts, and reactive reshoring put a finger on the dam while consumers absorb the price hikes with growing resentment. Instead of prompting reinvention, tariffs exposed how many companies had built brittle, cost-optimized models that can’t withstand sustained pressure.
64%
of executives said rising tariffs are disrupting pricing strategies, but only 21% are using it as a trigger for long-term innovation.
Source: KPMG
So, what now?
Use external shocks to audit your business model for fragility. If sudden shifts like tariffs kill your margins, it’s a warning your model may be too dependent on assumptions that aren’t future-proof. Invest in agility, modular supply, and value creation beyond cost arbitrage.
OVER-PERSONALIZING & UNDER-DELIVERING
Brands spent the last decade stockpiling customer data, betting big that hyper-personalization would drive loyalty. Instead, they’ve triggered fatigue, erosion of trust, and in some cases open consumer revolt.
Too often, companies ask for everything and give back little to nothing. Creepy ads, irrelevant “custom” offers, tone-deaf cross-sells—it’s extractive and it feels lazy which is leading customers to push back. They’re opting out of tracking and promotion and even dropping brands who overreach.
2 in 3
consumers disengaged after a creepy or inaccurate personalization experience.
Source: BCG
