Weathering Change vs. Changing the Weather

Why Passive Adaptation Won’t Save You in 2025

By: Nick Hinckley of FMK Agency

There are two types of companies in the world: those that brace for the storm and those that become the storm.

Every industry, every market, and every business function lives under the constant threat of shifting conditions—new technologies, evolving consumer expectations, the occasional billionaire throwing a wrench in an entire ecosystem (looking at you, X). Some companies grit their teeth, huddle up, and try to weather the changes. Others grab the steering wheel and decide that if the landscape is shifting, they might as well be the ones tilting the axis.

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So here’s the question: are you weathering change, or are you changing the weather?

Weathering Change: The Passive Survival Strategy

This is the default mode of most businesses. Something shifts—AI automates 90% of a marketer’s daily grind, a new privacy regulation upends tracking, a recession tightens budgets—and the response is reactive:

Cut costs.
Play it safe.
Adapt just enough to keep up.

These companies treat change like an external force they have no control over. They restructure, they “pivot” (usually in the most incremental way possible), they absorb losses and try to find stability.

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But stability is an illusion. You don’t get bonus points for surviving.

Changing the Weather: The Aggressive Adaptation Mindset

Then there are the companies that don’t just react to change—they dictate it. They see a coming shift and push it further, forcing competitors to scramble in their wake. They recognize that transformation isn’t a thing that happens to them—it’s a thing they initiate.

Think about:

Apple killing the headphone jack.
OpenAI dropping ChatGPT and sending entire industries into existential crises overnight.
Netflix abandoning its DVD rental roots and redefining global entertainment.

These weren’t reactionary plays; they were strategic disruptions that changed customer expectations, rewrote industry norms, and left the more cautious players scrambling to keep up.

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This is where FMK lives. We don’t just help companies survive change—we help them own it.

So, How Do You Change the Weather?

Stop Waiting for a Consensus

If you’re waiting for your competitors to validate a move, you’re already late. The companies that lead don’t sit around debating whether AI will replace content marketing—they’re already testing what an AI-driven marketing stack looks like.

Make Strategic Bets, Not Safe Plays

Safe is slow. Safe is forgettable. If you’re trying to be everything to everyone, you’ll be nothing to anyone. The brands that change the game take calculated risks. They launch bold campaigns. They kill off outdated processes before the market forces them to. They’re not afraid to alienate the wrong customers in order to attract the right ones.

Engineer Virality Instead of Chasing Trends

The difference between trend-followers and trendsetters? One spends six months A/B testing the perfect TikTok post; the other drops an out-of-nowhere campaign so unhinged (yet strategic) that everyone else has no choice but to react.

Invest in Transformation, Not Just Maintenance

Most companies spend the bulk of their budgets maintaining the status quo—patching outdated websites, optimizing last year’s campaigns, tweaking things at the margins. The weather changers? They build from scratch, burn down what’s irrelevant, and create the future they want to exist in.