168: Unfear: Transformation into Growth and Learning with Gaurav Bhatnagar & Mark Minukas

Gaurav Bhatnagar and Mark Minukas are the founders of Co-Creation Partners, a firm that advises, consults, and coaches senior leaders and their teams on how they can design improvement programs and harness the talent and creativity of their people to achieve better business results. They focus on how people show up, communicate, problem-solve, and lead to determine how large the gap is between strategy and execution. Together Gaurav and Mark researched and authored a book, Unfear: Transform Your Organization to Create Breakthrough Performance and Employee Well-Being. They suggest we have two superpowers: the power of imagination, and the power of language, which we use to craft our future. In our imagination, we see fear as something bad that we need to protect against, and as a result, we show up in a certain way. Yet, if we imagine it as an opportunity for learning, shifting the language to ‘unfear,’ it gives us a whole new avenue, partnering with fear to explore new ideas, opening a way for making choices and decisions.

Gaurav and Mark had each been helping organizations transform their business performance for over 15 years prior to working together. Previously, Mark served in the Navy, working as an engineer, and then joined McKinsey as a business analyst, progressively elevating his role for several years. He and Gaurav first met partnering on a project there. Gaurav was an external vendor who did mindset and organizational culture work, while Mark brought operations expertise to the project. Initially, Mark was very skeptical about Gaurav’s work, concerned that he might actually harm their project. Interestingly, Mark’s view of Gaurav’s contributions to their work quickly changed. Soon after they completed the work, Mark left McKinsey to start his own consulting firm, and periodically, he and Gaurav would collaborate on projects. A few years later, they officially joined together at Co-Creation Partners.

In this week’s Work From The Inside Out podcast, learn about Gaurav’s and Mark’s journeys:

• Gaurav and Mark each bring their strengths to combine into a cohesive team at Co-Creation Partners. They see that there are two parts to everything: there's a being part and a doing part.
• Mark is very good about creating discipline around systems and the corresponding implementation.
• Gaurav’s strength is helping people shift their mindset, and presence, into solid behaviors.

Learn more and connect with Gaurav and Mark here:

• Visit: www.unfearbook.com
• Visit: www.cocreationpartners.com
• Connect on LinkedIn: Co–Creation Partners 
• Connect on LinkedIn: Gaurav Bhatnagar 
• Connect on LinkedIn: Mark Minukas 

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