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 2145: Being Passed Over

purposed worKING No Comments

“Then Jesse told his son Abinadab to step forward and walk in front of Samuel. But Samuel said, “This is not the one the Lord has chosen.”

In work, we get passed over all the time.  Sometimes it is because we don’t get the job we expected.  Other times someone else just gets promoted over us.  And then sometimes, it’s just because someone doesn’t see us in a bigger job and we get left behind.  And it is not only the people who are in the jobs that get passed over who are affected, but all of the people who are on that person’s coattails also feel left out and then don’t think they will ever get ahead because they lost their champion or supporter. It’s not an inconsequential event when someone gets passed over as there are many ramifications and it takes real maturity to look past the current moment and instead to think in a longer time frame and in the bigger picture.  So, we have to zoom out and try the best we can to see what needs to be managed when we make the selection choices and certainly when we know that someone is being passed over or losing out.

God chose to make the change with Saul and make David King.  This was not what Saul was expecting and as you can imagine, all the emotions kicked into high gear and there was a lot of fear and denials.  But, God was more than sure that Saul could not move forward as the King.  So, it became a real problem that Saul wanted to make it as difficult on Samuel and David as possible.  There are many things we can learn from this account, but one that we can carry forward with us through each and every day is that when things don’t go our way we get to choose to respond in one way or another.  We can see in God’s Word that had Saul listened to God in the first place and had he followed what God had to tell him that Saul could have been a faithful follower, but he wasn’t and this isn’t the way any of us would want to respond to what God is telling us to do.  And, also the same learning for how we respond when things don’t go our way.

Reference: 1 Samuel 16:8 (New Living Translation)