Author Archives: Rusty Rueff

About Rusty Rueff

Rusty Rueff, author of purposed worKING. Rusty Rueff is the former Chairman Emeritus of The GRAMMY Foundation in Los Angeles. He most recently completed the successful 16 month leadership role as Coordinating National Co-Chair for Technology for Obama (T4O) for the reelection of President Obama and ten-years of Board service and President of the Board of Trustees of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Corporately, most recently Rueff was the Chief Executive Officer at SNOCAP, Inc. until the acquisition of the company by imeem, Inc. in April 2008. Before joining SNOCAP in 2005, he was Executive Vice President of Human Resources at Electronic Arts (EA) from 1998 until 2005. He was also with the PepsiCo companies for more than ten years, with the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies for two years, and in commercial radio as an on-air personality for six years. Rusty holds an M.S. in counseling and a B.A. in radio and television from Purdue University. In 2003 he was named a distinguished Purdue alumnus, and he and his wife, Patti, are the named benefactors of Purdue’s Patti and Rusty Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts. He is a corporate director of Glassdoor.com and runcoach. He is the co-founder and Executive Committee Member of T4A.org, serves on the Founding Circle of The Centrist Project and a founding Board Member of The GRAMMY Music Education Coalition. He is also the co-author of the book Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business. Rusty and his wife, Patti, reside in Hillsborough, CA and Charlestown, R.I.

day 3K273: Grow Or Out

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“I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more.”

I was on a Zoom this past week with a group of executives from a company that is about to take in a very large round of funding.  It’s so large in comparison with the size of the company that it can only be explained as significant “Growth Capital”.  That means these new investors are pouring gasoline on the fire in expectation that the company can quickly double, triple, quadruple or more the revenue and profits of the business. One of the executives asked me, “How do you think things will change for us when we close this round?”.  My answer was, “You better grow”.  And what I mean by that is that not only the company as an organization better grow, the people inside the company will all need to grow professionally or…they are probably out of the company.  Up or out of a company means you are either able to be promoted soon or you will be asked to leave the company. Grow or out may not feel as pressured but it still means that everyone needs to find out how the need to grow and then get after it!

Our God is all about growth! If He wasn’t why would He allow our population on the Earth to grow?  Why did He build us so that our capacity to learn more could grow?  Why does He permit us to travel into space to grow our understanding of the universes He created?  Why would Jesus have given us the metaphor of the vine and the branches and tell us that if we don’t grow the branches will be cut off going even further to prune the branches so that they can grow more?  He is about growth.  What He is not about is the “out” part.  He wants us to grow, but when we fail to do so, He still accepts and is more than willing to hold our hand as we start over, (again and again) until we are back “in” His will.

Reference: John 15: 1-2 (New Living Translation)