Unfear: Transform Your Organization to Create Breakthrough Performance and Employee Well-Being - Hardcover

Bhatnagar, Gaurav; Minukas, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1264268165 ISBN 13: 9781264268160

Publisher: McGraw Hill, 2022

Synopsis

Two top experts on high-performing organizations show you how to reframe your―and your employees’―relationship with fear and anxiety to create a learning culture of engaged workers at the top of their game.

Fear and uncertainty have been undermining performance and well-being in the workplace for as long as we have had workplaces. Here’s a little-known fact of business: mismanaged fear is responsible for almost all of the dysfunction that most organizations experience. While fear can drive short-term results, it does so at the cost of high employee burnout and turnover. It also undermines long-term business performance. But we can’t eradicate it entirely; it is inherent to the human condition. Winning organizations aren’t fear-free; they know how to reframe fear into opportunities for learning and growth. They create resilient cultures of unfear.

In this timely and essential guide, McKinsey alumni Gaurav Bhatnagar and Mark Minukas show leaders:

• The impact of fear, its biological underpinnings, and the archetypes through which it is expressed as patterns of behavior in organizations
• The strategies, techniques, and actions to bring about an unfear transformation
• The process begins with yourself―how to become an unfear individual
• Transformation doesn’t start with systems and structures but with mindsets and behavior―how to build unfear teams
• Employee well-being leads to high performance for your business―how to build unfear organizations

This proven approach to workplace anxiety reduces stress, boosts engagement, and overcomes obstacles that get in the way of success. It leads to personal rewards greater profits, and sustainable growth. This is only possible with a culture of unfear.

About this title

About the Author

Gaurav Bhatnagar is the founder of Co-Creation Partners and has dedicated more than two decades to helping companies thrive and achieve breakthrough performance. Since founding Co-Creation Partners in 2010, he has designed and led programs and workshops for private, public, and social-sector clients across multiple industries, including financial services, basic materials, manufacturing, healthcare, and technology. Prior to founding Co-Creation Partners, he was a consultant with McKinsey and Company, most recently as a leader in their Organization Practice in North America. Before McKinsey, he worked in marketing for Pepsi Cola International and Procter & Gamble in Europe, the Middle East, and India. 

Mark Minukas is the managing partner of Co-Creation Partners. An engineer by training, he began his career as a Navy officer and member of the US Naval Construction Battalion (Seabees) and the Navy Dive Community. In 2005, he brought his experience and insights into the performance of engineered systems to McKinsey and Company, where he worked as a consultant and member of the Operations Academy. There, he mastered the technical aspect of organizational transformation and process improvement, as well as the cultural side of transformation. Since leaving McKinsey to join Co-Creation Partners, Mark has worked across multiple industries, including financial services, high tech, biotech manufacturing, IT services, and governmental offices, to deliver both top- and bottom-line improvements and build high-performing operations. 

From the Back Cover

"The lifeblood of the modern organization is the capacity of its people to create and innovate and keep pushing the boundaries of what is possible. While we acknowledge that doing this is fraught with uncertainty and risk, what we don’t acknowledge or talk about in organizations is the fear and the dysfunction it causes. In this timely and much needed book, Gaurav Bhatnagar and Mark Minukas share their learnings from over 30 years of working with leaders and organizations to achieve breakthrough performance. They offer insightful advice on how to unfear—to fundamentally shift our relationship with fear and use it as a tool for learning and growth, both personally as individuals and systemically as leaders of organizations. This book will transform how you live your life and how you lead your teams and organization. A must-read!"
—Sean Aggarwal, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Lyft

"In Unfear, you will read how Gaurav Bhatnagar responds to a personal transformational opportunity with great skepticism, sarcasm. and disdain. We've all been there, haven't we? Could a moment really transform a person? Could reading a book? With Bhatnagar and Minukas as your sherpas, the answer is yes—and this is that book. Crack it open with skepticism; close it having been transformed. This is the moment you’ve been waiting for. Take it. You won't regret it. You'll be forever changed."
—Richard Sheridan, CEO and Chief Storyteller of Menlo Innovations and author of Joy, Inc.: How We Built a Workplace People Love

"Many of us charged with charting a path toward sustainable growth—a path that taps into the diversity, authenticity, and genius of all our employees—struggle to find the right way to express and build the type of culture this requires. Terms like risk taking, learning organization, agile, lean, and purpose-driven don’t quite seem to capture it; they are manifestations, not the core, of what is needed. Unfear nails it, and its principles point to the profound personal roots that any organizational transformation requires."
—Monica McGurk, Chief Global Growth Officer of Kellogg Company

"When we transform our response to fear—that most visceral and evolutionarily wired human emotion—we transform our orientation to life, how we conduct business, and the outcomes we are able to generate. We no longer fall into the trap of trading success for well-being. Gaurav and Mark have written a book that comes from their hearts and yet draws on their decades of work with leaders and organizations. They’ve produced a blueprint for creating Unfear organizations—adaptive, resilient in the face of adversity, and able to generate extraordinary results while putting the well-being of the human beings who make up the organization at the very center. Having worked with them for many years, I can vouch that the approach delivers what it promises."
—Doug Wirth, CEO of Amida Care

"I have great respect for Gaurav and Mark and the work they do, having partnered with them on several initiatives at Harlem United. Yet, with so many organizational culture change how-tos on the market, I have to admit I was a little skeptical of what I could learn from Unfear. But within just a few pages, that skepticism melted away. In Unfear, Gaurav and Mark present a new paradigm for creating true, lasting individual and organizational change. Sharing their own life experiences and real-world examples of their work make this a very relatable read. They provide actionable and practical guidelines for an unfear transformation. If you wonder why all of the work you’ve done—the surveys, focus groups, trainings, workshops, strategic plans, etc.—hasn’t led to truly sustainable change, despite your sincere commitment to creating that change, read Unfear. If you are committed to creating a conscious, sustainable transformation—for yourself, your team, and your organization—this book will help you achieve that." 
—Jacquelyn Kilmer, CEO of Harlem United

"Gaurav and Mark offer us a powerful path to harmonize organizational performance with employee well-being by reengineering the inner life of an organization and its people. Kudos! You can't read this book without taking away some valuable lessons and practical tools on how to acknowledge and transcend the fears we experience, individually and collectively, in our workplace. Written for organizational leaders who understand that, in the end, we are all human."
—Hitendra Wadhwa, Professor of Practice at Columbia Business School and founder of Mentora Institute

"I have worked with Gaurav and Co-Creation Partners at critical growth points for myself and my organization. I was able to grow immensely as a leader in a short period of time, becoming more courageous, authentic, and connected to the people around me. Unfear captures the spirit of our work, seamlessly blending business and philosophy concepts and frameworks with profound personal stories. Read it!  It will fundamentally change the way you relate to yourself—replacing stress and fear with an earnest belief in your infinite potential and a resolute desire to unleash as much of it as you possibly can."
—Nick Christman, SVP of Product and Client Operations at Namely

"In today’s world, building resilient organizations and societies is key to sustained growth and happiness. A critical part of this process is reimagining and reframing your relationship with fear. Unfear presents practical, actionable ways to do this—to free the angel in the stone. This inspiring must-read will empower your journey from fear to unfear!"
—Jyoti Rai, Managing Director of Global Human Resources at Moody’s Corporation

"In this book, Mark and Gaurav share their wisdom and learnings from over two decades of working closely with teams and organizations. And they make a very compelling argument that a common cause of underperformance of individuals and organizations is personal and cultural fear. Overcoming fear to move from a victim mentality into an ownership mentality and from a knower mentality into a learner mentality are necessary for individuals and organizations to reach their potential and compete in this economy. Highly recommended!"
—Guru Sethupathy, Managing Vice President and Head of People Strategy and Analytics at Capital One

"Gaurav and Mark boldly take on the hidden yet biggest inhibitor to sustainable change in organizations, our individual and collective experience of fear at work. Unfear helps us stop and consider how our own leadership behaviors lead to organizations full of judgment, mistrust, and division. It shows us a clear path out of this dysfunction, one that starts with us as individuals. This is a deeply engaging and thought-provoking read with practical ideas you can apply with your teams, as well as in your personal life."
—Dalton Li, Head of Strategic Enablement and Advancement at Vanguard

"Fear is one of the biggest inhibitors of personal and professional happiness. In Unfear, Gaurav and Mark do an amazing job of defining the different facets of fear and explaining practices that one can undertake to experience sustained transformation. This is a supremely practical book that is filled with personal stories and examples from their professional experiences. The passion they have for helping others comes through very strongly. A life-changing book!"
—Venu Kannan, Head of Professional Services for the Americas at UiPath

Edition details

• Publisher: McGraw Hill
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1264268165
• ISBN 13: 9781264268160
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272