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 1146: An Outfit of Humility

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“The Humble will see their God at work and be glad. Let all who seek God’s help be encouraged.”

I didn’t pay much attention to J.C. Penney before they hired Ron Johnson away from Apple and started one of the great experiments in retail history.  Ron, along with Steve Jobs, had built what no one else imagined with their retail empire of Apple and they had done so by breaking all of the rules of retail and thinking something totally different.  And, they succeeded wildly.  The Board of J.C. Penney wanted some of that magic for their brand so they hired Ron and off he went.  But, there was a difference.  The culture of Penney’s was not Apple.  Ron had to not only sell a business plan to his Board and consumers, he had to win over the staff of J.C. Penney all the way down to the store level.  Case studies will be written at Harvard and Stanford about this one and what went wrong.  Did the Board not have enough courage and patience to see the experiment through?  Did Ron have it wrong and what worked at Apple would never work at a clothing retailer? Or was it that that the DNA of Penney’s that dates back to the founder, as a man of humility was so strong that any leader without that same value would fail with the rank and file?  We may never know the whole story, but let’s never count out humility, or lack thereof, as a driver of success and failure. With wholesale change, there has to be both those who lead from the front and those who lead from the back.

If we want to be different and have our faith shine brightly in the workplace, then just just don an outfit of humility and wear it to work for a week and watch what happens.  Humility is the simplest of characteristics to embrace and embody, and yet one of the hardest for most who are successful and striving to achieve.  Let’s be careful to not get too full of ourselves as pride is just as obvious, if not more so, than humility.

Reference: Psalm 69:32 (New Living Translation)