Testimonials

Executive Coaching

BDO
Stephen R. Ferrara, CPA – Partner, Chief Operating Officer @ BDO

High Performance Leadership is a great program for business leaders in any industry. It offers sensible, practical lessons along with research-based theory to back them up. Lucia’s passion and her deep expertise make it a compelling experience.
BlueCross BlueShield of Illinois
Jim Petrassi – CTO

I am happy to say that coaching has changed the trajectory of my career. I am so fortunate to have worked with the Center for High Performance. In the past 2 years, I have grown as a leader and contribute to driving my company’s critical change program.
The UNITE Group plc
Geoffrey Maddrell – Chairman @ The UNITE Group PLC

I frequently refer to your successful intervention with our board, which has served us well; particularly as external market conditions have inevitably raised the temperature of concerns and activity in our board discussions. It would have had a hugely negative impact if our board had not been able to address difficult issues so robustly. Thank you on behalf of the UNITE board.

Keynote Speaking

RSM McGladrey, Inc.
Robert Lindeman – Managing Director

Lucia takes a complex area and simplifies it with practical tools, processes, and concepts that can be readily applied at work (corporate, team, or individual level).
Sodexho
Sandy Shaw – V.P. Talent Development

Susan is a dynamic speaker, and she provided 50 of our senior executives from around the world with substantive ideas they could take back to their own teams. The data she presented from her study of high-performing workgroups was particularly enlightening.

Executive Education

AAA Leadership Team Drager
Vijay Jain – CEO

Thank you for joining our AAA management meeting in Lubeck Germany. We all enjoyed the fruitful and insightful learnings and discussions. This experience helped us to become closer as a team.
RSM McGladrey, Inc.
Rod Foster – Managing Director

Ms. Annunzio is one of a very select group of extremely talented and effective teachers and communicators. She’s great at keeping the environment fresh and interesting with energy and passion.
Medcor
Sharon Moise, MD – Chief Medical Officer

In times of challenge, Lucia has helped me navigate deftly and reach successful resolution. You have helped me to help my team be more successful and to navigate challenging people. I am eternally grateful for the role you have played in my life and career.

If you are considering working with Lucia, my advice is run, don’t walk, to work with her while she has spots. You won’t find a better, wiser, and more experienced coach than Lucia.

Books

Hill Holliday, New York
Brian Carty – President

…a completely fresh take on how to change any organization for the better…data-based action steps that can be implemented immediately.
Author
Jason Jennings – Best-selling author of “Less Is More” and “It’s Not the Big That Eat the Small – It’s the Fast That Eat the Slow”

A step-by-step instruction manual for making it happen… critical.
Fast Company
Reader’s Choice, Contagious Success

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.