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 2294: Top Of The Hill

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“Come on, climb right behind me,” Jonathan said to his armor bearer, “for the Lord will help us defeat them!”

I was asked the question by an entrepreneur who asked me if she should hire for experience or hire for potential?  As I dug into it, she was asking should she put her emphasis in hiring someone who has been there, done that?  Or, should she hire someone inexperienced to be trained and raised in the company?  Of course, the answer is one based on the situation. For other than mission critical positions, I am a fan of hiring the best athlete and watch how she/he can grow into the role.  But, for mission critical roles, the risk may be too high and the time not long enough to afford to bring them up to speed.  For certain jobs, we need the person who has been to the top of the hill and who is able and willing to pull us to the top.  In these roles the risk and cost is too high to experiment or to not have seen the situation before.  Do you have roles right now that you are struggling to figure who to recruit? Consider if it should be someone who is at the top of the hill already, or someone who is still looking up.

Jonathan exemplified for us what it means to lead from the top.  He was already up on the hill and he leaned over and looked back down to bring up his armor bearer.  And, when he asked him to come on up, Jonathan assured him that God was already before them both to help them defeat the Philistines.  That’s what we are to do, bring up those behind us and lean on God for His assurances and promises to lead us over the hill. That’s how we are to lead.

Reference: 1 Samuel 14:12