Your company has already right-sized, cut costs, improved effciency, and flattened the org chart, Yet profitable and sustainable growth remains elusive.

Fortunately, according to Susan Lucia Annunzio, you don't have to look far for the solution. Somewhere in your organization, right now, are high-performing workgroups that are generating profitable new ideas. These workgroups might consist of a few people or a few hundred; they might be fixed departments or ad hoc teams working on specific problems. Whatever size,they are the best answer you have to the creative and competitive demands of today's marketplace.

Annunzio and her team at the Hudson Highland Center for High Performance undertook a worldwide study of than three thousand knowledge work-ers, seeking the factors that accelerate or inhibit high performance in their workgroups. The shock-ing news is that only 10 percent of all workgroups in the study as high performing. Annunzio's big insight―supported by the groundbreaking research―is that the characteristics that drive high performance in these groups are the same around the world.

The fastest, most effective way to achieve prof-itable growth is to increase the performance of your best workgroups. You also can accomplish that goal by sharing the secrets of your strongest workgroups with the “ almost theres” ―those groups in the mid- dle of the pack. Too many organizations focus on minimizing failure by eliminating or improving low-performing groups, rather than spreading success.

By fostering the right work environment, companies can accelerate high performance. Contagious Suc-cess points the forward. It's an essential book for leaders who want to unleash the hidden poten-tial in their organizations.

Susan Lucia Annunzio is chairman and CEO of the Hudson Highland Center for High Performance , a subsidiary of Hudson High-land Croup, Inc. The author of Evolutionary Leadership and coauthor of Communi-coding, she advises senior executives around the world and is an adjunct pro-fessor of management at the University of Chicago Graduatef School of Business. She lives in Chicago and has two children.