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 2239: Go Your Own Way

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“Therefore, they must eat the bitter fruit of living their own way,choking on their own schemes.”

We seem to be in a new age of going our own way.  Sure, we lived through the “me generation” and it produced those that were about the individual, but there is something different in the water now about self-reliance and not needing anyone but ourselves.  This time around, it appears it is more about I don’t need those who are outside of the group who is not like me. The rest, they don’t matter.  We are seeing it at the top of our geopolitical approach, in industry, in communities, and what seems the worst catalyst of this thinking, on social media.  And so, it moves into our work cultures and thus back to our friendships. The danger with favoring our own way as the only way, is that when we are wrong and we need others (whether it be other countries, other companies, other tenants, other co-workers), they will likely not be there for the support we need.

Solomon opens up the teachings of the Proverbs telling us to seek and pay respect to wisdom.  He warns us that if we try and go our own way of living that it will taste like bitter fruit and that we will choke upon our own thinking, ways and schemes.  Where in our work and personal lives are we ignoring what wisdom and God can teach us?  Where are we too set in our own ways that we run the risk of choking upon our own plans and schemes?  God gives us daily reminders and words of wisdom if we so choose to seek them out.  It’s our only defense in keeping from being seduced by our own ways.

Reference:  Proverbs 1:31 (New Living Translation)