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 3K214: Just Remove Never From The Human Vocabulary

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“Yes, I am confirming my covenant with you. Never again will floodwaters kill all living creatures; never again will a flood destroy the earth.”

How many times have we heard, “I’ll never do that” or “That will never happen”?  We hear it all the time and then when a reversal comes about, guess what those who said “never” have to do?  They have to account for being wrong in the first place and then also explain why they changed their mind.  Netflix just did this with adding a $7/month ad-supported streaming option.  Reed Hastings had said they would never do this, but now they have. Wouldn’t we just be better to never say never?

As long as there are humans, the word “never” will be bandied around and said with full confidence and then later be pulled back. We are human and this is part of who we are, sadly.  But, that doesn’t mean that we can’t try really hard to not fall into the trap of “never” and then later to not have to explain ourselves.  I think it better that we leave the word “never” to God, for when He says it, we can count on Him and His word, forever.

Reference: Genesis 9:11 (New Living Translation)