Contagious Success: Spreading High Performance Throughout Your Organization Hardcover - 2004

by Susan Lucia Annunzio; Sharon Sutker McGowan (With)

The Hudson Highland Center for High Performance recently completed the largest and most in-depth global study ever done of the factors that accelerate or stifle high performance. The alarming conclusion: only 10 percent of knowledge workers are part of a high-performing workgroup, one that makes money for the company and is creating a new product or service.

Contagious Success reveals Susan Lucia Annunzio's proven strategies for identifying, nurturing, and replicating business units that are already high performing. These workgroups tend to be ignored while senior management focuses on fixing its lowest performing units. But Annunzio argues for the opposite strategy: Focus on the groups that are doing the best work in the organization, learn their secrets, and help spread their expertise to the average groups.

Annunzio focuses on groups, not individuals, because even a great individual can't succeed in a weak environment. By using the high-performing groups to improve just the top 20 percent of the average performers what Annunzio calls 'moving the middle' a company can achieve dramatic, sustainable growth in revenue and profits.

This is a book for leaders who want to unleash the hidden potential in their organizations.