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 2310: Cycle Leadership: Stuck

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“For I know that as you pray for me and the Spirit of Jesus Christ helps me, this will lead to my deliverance.”

Friday we looked at what it feels like when our business is weakening. Today, we explore what it is like to feel “stuck”.

Being “stuck” finds us in the nadir of the business cycle. Revenues have stalled, or our product has failed, or we just lost our major customer to the competition, or something has happened with leadership that feels irreparable, or we can’t find the next round of funding, or we just can’t connect with the new coworker, and we could go on and on.  Not everyone has experienced this stage of business, but those that have know how scary, alone and filled with desperation this stage can be. It’s probably too general to make this assumption, but more often than not, we get stuck because we didn’t do what we should have done to avoid this place. There are certainly external forces at play that we can’t control but few hit the bottom without having helped themselves to get there.  As I write this,the news cycle is dominated by the failure of some of our most recognized people in power. It started with the well-known movie executive. And, with this, we are seeing the company he co-founded on the verge of collapse.  The company line is that it is, “business as usual” as they sort through the survival options.  Allowing the “business as usual” was what got them into trouble in the first place.  If our business has passed into weakening, we must be diligent to not start grasping at whatever we can, but instead step back and remove what has gotten us to where we are, take our medicine, and do what needs to do to step by step dig ourselves out of the hole we are in.

God didn’t intend for us to be filled with fear, resentment, anxiety or desperation.  He provides us with many promises and lessons how to work through these times. He also gives us role models for us to look.  Joseph spent a great amount of his life in places that felt as though he was stuck.  A well, slavery and prison.  Clear pictures of being stuck. But, what did Joseph do?  Did he become filled with fear?  Did he become desperate?  Did he blame God? Did he grasp out at those things that were not of God?  No, he was consistent and faithful.  He counted on God to deliver him and while he was literally stuck, he was never stuck without God. There is so much we can learn from Joseph’s example to help us through the times we feel stuck in place.  Let us remember and rely on what we can learn from his account.

Tomorrow, things start to look a little more “promising” as we explore the third of four leadership cycle stages

Reference: Philippians 1:19 (New Living Translation)