Merge

We've heard the cliches and the rhetoric about the New Normal, which many dismiss and assume things will go back to normal. Merge has seen this Newness settle in over the years, and it has nothing to do with the great recession.

The problem is that there is nothing Normal about the New.

The New Normal is flux. The New Normal deals with things today that weren't invented yesterday. The New Normal deals with kids in dorm rooms creating billion dollar companies (can you say, "Who moved my cheese?").

The New Normal disrupts. It turns entire industries on their heads. Think about the music industry. When is the last time you bought a CD? How's blockbuster doing? Kodak? Bankrupt. Newspapers? The venerable NYT Predicts it will be done in the near future.

As I write this blog I'm listening to Rdio and Pandora. I haven't listened to a radio station in 18 months.  I don't subscribe to TV. I consume everything over the net (and often via my phone).

The New Normal? Hardly. The New Normal is called Flux, n. the action or process of flowing.

"If you don't flow, you're going to go" could be the adage of the day. Reminds me of "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." Perhaps the New Normal simply means that days of sitting back and getting fat are over. If you look at success today, it's a skinny 20 something in a wrinkled button down and jeans. Why? Well, because they didn't have to flux. They are flux.

Look, I'm 37 as I write this post. Flux is no longer as easy for me as it once was. I watch my kids pick up an iPad for the first time and use it like it was born in their hands.

But even though I'm losing my flux-ability (Lord, forgive me), I've built a company that Fluxes. We have complete confidence that whatever comes out tomorrow, we can do. Mobile? No problem. Google changes it's algorithm. Bring it on. HTML(5)? Check.

We aren't scared because Merge's purpose is to flux. What we offer our clients is the ability for them to flux. What they know is their business (no pun intended). They can't keep up with Google, mobile innovation, the latest and greatest CMS, a new ecommerce platform, social media and the like. It would be like a patient trying to keep up with the latest advances in medicine. Unless you want to go to school for 14 years it's not happening.

We get the question, "Have you ever done this before?" In the New Normal of Flux, that's a stupid question. Hell, "this" is two months old. No, we've never done "this" before, but we figured how to do that, that and that. So yes, we've done "this" a thousand times. What we do all the time is stuff we've never done before. To the Flux Generation, that's a completely logical statement. If it sounded crazy to you, well, you know where you stand!

Survival in The New Normal requires flux especially as it addresses digital initiatives. How you flux is entirely up to you: are you going to internalize it (hire young, bright all-stars), hire flux-partners like Merge, acquire a younger innovative company?--or--are you going to choose not to flux, ride out what you have and hopefully make it to the horizon before time runs out?

The New Normal gives you only one choice: Flux.