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 1275: Losing to Thankfulness

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“Let us come to him with thanksgiving. Let us sing psalms of praise to him.”

There is a quote in the TV show, Game of Thrones, that stuck with me.  The Queen Mother says to her young son, who has just become King, that he better needs to understand the commoners. She says to him, “People not like us expect to lose important things in life.”   What she was saying is that those not in royalty can find themselves living their life expecting to lose, not always holding a manifest destiny to winning.  The business world is the same.  Those on top, expect more.  Those who are struggling, smaller, and trying to keep their head above water, appreciate and look at their business differently. The front page of the New York Times business section today, reminds us of a time in Silicon Valley, 1999, when all was great and nothing could get in our way to success. We knew no risk.  We expected only the best.  And, when it went away, and we were humbled, we appreciated and became more thankful of what he had, what we had learned and what we could expect going forward. The lesson?  We need to keep ourselves in check and recognize that losing will bring greater appreciation and thankfulness, so how can we cultivate that spirit of humility and gratitude, even in the best of times?

We all get hurt. We all lose out on something we expected.  We all will get beaten down at some point in our careers and lives.  Even in the losing, we can be thankful as someone else will always be in more of a struggle than we are.  Tomorrow, and into this long weekend, let’s remember the wins and the losses and see if we can’t find a place of equal thankfulness.  Ours is a place to be the example of continuous thankfulness. Anything less is not giving our God His due!

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your loved ones!

Reference: Psalm 95:2 (New Living Translation)