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 1936: Next In Line

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“Saul has killed his thousands, and David his ten thousands!”

It is expected today that if you are a leader that you need to have someone coming up behind you who can be your successor. If you don’t, especially as we climb more senior on the corporate ladder, we can expect that we won’t progress as we must have someone or someones behind us who can take our place.  It takes systemic and long term thinking to put together a plan and then stick with it to get someone ready for the future. We have to be willing to teach, accept mistakes, allow people to get smarter and to also put our own performance on the line when our proteges fail or disappoint us and others. What does that mean? That means that we have full corporate support and buy-in to raise up the next generation.  It won’t be easy, but there isn’t a better time than now to start to identify, groom, grow and develop those who can do your job in the future.

A few weeks ago, Pastor Luis Menjivar, taught at my church, CornerstoneSF.  He spoke on the contrasts between King Saul and David.  What struck me most, among Luis’ other great lessons, was that Saul just wasn’t ready to be succeeded.  He was supposed to be with God and others telling him that his time was up, but Saul just couldn’t get over the fact that David was garnering more accolades, praise, respect and following than Saul was now able.  I find the lesson to also be that when we fully humble ourselves to God’s will that we have to be ready for His will to remove us, replace us, subordinate us, and/or make us irrelevant to those who we have sought for validation in the past.  There is only One from whom we need to be concerned with for validation and acceptance and this is in Him! When we find ourselves either threatened or insecure about our place, then let’s be sure and remember that it is only His “line” that really matters.

Reference:  1 Samuel 18:7 (New Living Translation)