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 1276: 404 Error Messages

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“Indeed, we all make many mistakes.”

There is no shortage today of talk about web sites not working.  When a website doesn’t load or the page cannot be found, we get what is called a “404 Error Page”.  At the beginning of internet time that message read, “Room 404 Error” because at the CERN headquarters in Switzerland where the internet was created (sorry Al Gore), any errors were routed to a room on the 4th floor, room 404.  And so it was, a message we all will see was created.  Today many companies try and be creative with their errors. Twitter had the “Fail Whale”.  MLB.com shows players getting hit by balls in bad places. The point is that the internet gives us license to make a mistake and get through it. Sometimes I wish I could wear a 404 Error T-Shirt under another shirt so that when I make a mistake, which I make too many, I could flash my error message and move on. But we tend to not to allow that in our work.  We like to dwell on a problem and many times make a mountain from the mole hill. How much better would we be if we fessed up, defined the error, and explained how the mistake wouldn’t happen again, all without drama.

As we go to work today and start planning how we are going to sprint between now and the Christmas break, we might as well accept and expect that mistakes are going to be made. And, unfortunately, some of those mistakes will be hurtful to others and ourselves. But this is where God becomes our only salvation. Jesus came to give us a way for our sins to be forgiven. If we are honest with God and ourselves we can accept our errors, offer them to Him for forgiveness and move on.  Today, and this holiday season, let’s not dwell on our errors and allow them to set up back or get us down. Instead, let’s let God do what He wants to do with us and lift us up and out of our human 404 errors.

Reference: James 3:2 (New Living Translation)