FutureSolve Joins Leading HR Voices in the Age of HR

FutureSolve is proud to partner with the University of South Carolina’s Center for
Executive Succession to bring readers, The Age of HR, with voices provided by
FutureSolve’s very own Andy Najjar (COO) and Ken Carrig (Founder) as they contribute
to this conversation on the future of HR.

The world of HR is evolving drastically, leaving the old HR playbook to be revised. That
is the premise behind the book, The Age of HR, a new collection published by the
University of South Carolina’s Center for Executive Succession. Across 62 chapters,
this book brings scholars, executives, and HR thought leaders together to understand
how talent, leadership, culture, technology, and the HR function itself are changing and
how companies interpret these changes in order to evolve alongside them. Among
these voices are FutureSolve’s COO Andy Najjar and founder Ken Carrig, whose
chapter (36), “Why and How Blue Zone Companies Perform Better and Last Longer,”
offers practical insight into what makes organizations healthier, more adaptive, and
resilient to change.

This book serves not as an HR manual but a conversation about how HR can create
value for employees, leaders, customers, and investors. In the midst of that discussion
lie Carrig and Najjar’s contributions which sit in the book’s culture section. In their
discussion, the two turn the focus on how organizations can sustain performance
primarily by asking readers to think about culture as a strategic lever that shapes the
learning, decision-making, adaptation, and endurance of a company, and less so as a
flashy slogan.
Borrowing from the idea of Blue Zones, which are regions where the livelihood of
populations are marked by excellent nutrition and physical activity, as well as strong
social bonds with a deep sense of purpose, Carrig and Najjar look to see how those
insights can be mirrored in organizational settings. Beyond that, they seek to
understand how the environmental and cultural characteristics of Blue Zones can be
integrated in business to produce more resilient, high-performing companies. In doing
so, they discuss these six factors that appear in enduring companies: strategy and
purpose, operational excellence, customer focus, learning, accountability, and agility,
and innovation with purpose.

In breaking these characteristics down further, FutureSolve CEO Andy Najjar and fellow
founder Ken Carrig develop the message that the culmination of these factors can
transform any company into a Blue Zone company when their strategy is
operationalized through purpose, situational awareness, a change-ready mindset, and
the strategic allocation of resources to initiatives that support that.

Read more about Blue Zone company characteristics in Chapter 36 of The Age of HR

Carrig and Najjar also bring the Blue Zone company idea into the AI conversation. As AI
adoption holds implications for how workflows, skills, trust, and overall employee
experience are changing, thus making the acceptance of AI into the workplace more
nuanced than just a technology decision for companies. With the value and utility of AI
often misunderstood, the key message that Najjar and Carrig leave HR leaders with is
to look at AI as an “accelerator” rather than a cure-all tool.

Finally, readers and HR leaders who wish to keep up with these shifting work conditions
are given a unique and useful lens for thinking about longevity in the face of AI. With
organizations concerned about how to survive these changes as they cling to outdated
processes and norms, FutureSolve’s founders provide Chapter 36 as a way to reframe
this thinking and adjust it towards viewing longevity as intentional decisions about
culture, leadership, and learning.