• thoughts you should know… "You're fired!"
• thought leader university… thoughtleading ROI
• thoughts and actions… writer's fright
• thought leader spotlights… kudos for recent victories

• Elvis Presley got fired from a music studio in 1954. "You ain't goin' nowhere, son. Go back home and drive a truck," they told him.
• Walt Disney was canned by a newspaper for lack of ideas!
• J.K. Rowling lost her secretarial job after she got caught using a company computer to write creative stories. She used her severance pay to write Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
• Lance Armstrong was dropped by his French cycling team after beginning treatments for testicular cancer. His ex-teammates even refused to pay his remaining salary or medical bills.
• Larry King got the boot from his columnist's job at the Miami Herald for being too "chummy" with his interview subjects.
• Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood were both fired in the same meeting with a film studio executive who told Burt he couldn't act and Clint he had too prominent an Adam's apple.
• Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer (in his garage), got fired by his own successor managers at Apple. Years later he co-founded Pixar (and you know the rest!).
• Abraham Lincoln failed in business 1831 and again in 1833. He also ran for the Illinois state legislature and lost. His sweetheart died in 1835, and he had a nervous breakdown in 1836. He ran for the nomination to Congress in 1843 and lost that one too, then was defeated again for Congress in 1848 and 1855. He lost a run for the vice presidency of the United States in 1856. In 1858, he ran for Senator against Stephen Douglas and... yes... you guessed it... nada.

In 1860 Honest Abe got himself elected 16th president of the United States. History has since declared him the greatest the USA has ever had.

thought leader spotlight...
...kudos for recent victories

Congratulations to the following thought leaders whose articles were just published in the prestigious Handbook of Business Strategy 2005:

• "Emergent Strategy: Unpredictable Ways to Release the Natural Intelligence of Your Organization"
  By Jay Vogt, Peoplesworth

• "Managing Dispersed Teams: How They Differ from Traditional Ones"
  By Elaine Crowley, The Crowley Group

• "Strategic Conversations with Your Customers: Make Customers Part of Your Strategic Planning"
  By Mike Oleksak, Trek Consulting LLC

• "How Organizations Select New Places to Operate and How People Issues Fit into the Equation"
  By Carol Bergeron, Bergeron Associates

• "How is Your IT Project Portfolio Performing?"
  By Vin D'Amico, Damicon

• "Best Way to Improve Your Organization's Performance: Improve How You Impart Core Values"
  By Bill Evans, Worksense Consulting Group

• "Best Practices for Dealing with Offshore Software Development"
  By Dave Vogel and Jill E. Connelly, Intertech Engineering Associates

• "Leveraging Executive-Level 'Customer Champions' to Increase Customer Focus and Drive Profits"
  By Curtis Bingham, The Predictive Consulting Group

• "Diversity: The Heart of Innovative Thinking"
  By Jeff Govendo, The Innovative Edge

• "Getting to Market Faster by Putting It ALL Together"
  By John Nisbet, Kilcreggan Consulting

• "Want to Motivate Your Employees? Keep Your Company Safe and You Will"
  By Joan Curtice, Joan Curtice Associates

• "Proactively Protecting Trademarks on the Internet"
  By Doug Wolf, Wolf Greenfield

• "Is Your Benefits Procurement a Complexity Monster? Value-Added Consulting Plus Technology Can Save the Day"
  By Dan Cassidy, Argus Consulting Ltd

• "Manage for Today, Mentor for Tomorrow: Strategies for Developing Your Next Round of Leaders"
  By Michael Shenkman, Arch of Leadership. NOTE: This article is adapted from Michael's new book The Arch and the Path, the Life of Leading Greatly published by Sandia Heights Media 2004
  

To read a complimentary copy of any of these articles, visit the author's web site or reply to this email. For direct links to our thought leaders' websites, click: http://www.thoughtleading.com/clients.htm

And congrats as well to our other thought leaders for their publishing, media and speaking triumphs:

• Chuck Hughes, author of What it Really Takes to Get into the Ivy League and Other Highly Selective Colleges and Co-President of Road to College, interviewed by WELI AM (New Haven, CT) on the topic of getting into the college of your choice

• Margaret Woodruff, Senior Principal with Mitretek Healthcare, who spoke at the annual conference of the American Association of Eye and Ear Hospitals in New Orleans, LA

• Steve Pemberton and Chuck Hughes, Co-Founders of Road to College whose article "New Conditions in College Admissions in Just the Last 10 Years" was published in Reference Guide Magazine

• Michael Albert, Shareholder at Wolf Greenfield, quoted in an article on IP Trends in The Chronicle of Higher Education

• Michael Siekman, Counsel at Wolf Greenfield, for his letter to the editor about the Coakwell decision published in Intellectual Property Today

• Frank Kittredge, Senior Principal with Mitretek Healthcare, for his article "Co-opetition: Successfully Partnering Hospitals and Physicians" in Executive Insight

• Michael N. Rader, Associate at Wolf Greenfield, for his article "Keeping the Home Court Advantage: Reduce Cost and Hassle by Litigating IP Cases in the Forum of Your Choice" published in New England In-House Counsel

• Jim Foster, Shareholder at Wolf Greenfield, who was interviewed by CIO Magazine for an article on the Knorr-Bremse case

To read a complimentary copy of any of these articles, or to learn more about a talk, presentation or media interview, visit the thought leader's web site or send your request to this email. For direct links to all our thought leaders' websites, click: http://www.thoughtleading.com/clients.htm

NOTE: Due to a high volume of thought leader victories this month, we could not include them all in this issue. They will be reported in next month's edition of thoughtnotes.