When you lose your keys, you've often left them in the last place you'd think to look. Companies in search of a competitive edge do the same thing. They look outside for answers when the secret ingredients for success might already be right under their noses. Every company has a few ace workgroups -- identify those top-flight teams and "clone the genes" by positioning them as examples for other employees to follow. Simple, right? That's the thesis of management wonk Susan Lucia Annunzio's latest book, where, fortunately, she's done all the legwork. To determine what makes some teams good at what they do -- be it HR at Microsoft UK or product development at Whirlpool Corp. -- Annunzio put 3,000 knowledge workers under the microscope in search of a universal formula for high performance. The result is a book about the dos and don'ts of managing, intended for rising execs with teams of their own. Although it's illustrated with dozens of examples of "high performing" workgroups in action, don't look for many actual leadership secrets; Contagious Success is more of a field guide for how to cultivate and leverage your firm's secrets once you find them.

Backstory A lifelong consultant and educator, Annunzio takes a break from her day jobs teaching management at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and heading the Hudson Highland Center for High Performance (where she is both chairman and CEO) to offer up her third book on managing and leadership.

What we liked For all its research and numbers, Contagious Success is really a book about people; satisfy your employees -- foster a comfortable working environment and provide good role models -- and your efforts will be realized in your quarterly earnings reports. Call it trickle-down customer service.

What we didn't The book seems to promote micromanagement as the key to success. The case studies often feel more like common sense or necessity than brilliant strategy. Annunzio's central success-as-virus argument has one primary flaw: Companies can only be as good as their best existing workgroup.

What to say to sound like you've read it The best managers aren't alchemists, they're copycats. Smart leaders should skip the strategizing and hold up their best teams and workgroups as templates for the rest of the staff.