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 1060: Try, Try and Try Again

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“Then Jesus called to the crowd to come and hear. “Listen,” he said, “and try to understand.”

Failing is part of trying. No successful business or businessperson has gotten to where they are without failing at least once, and many have failed multiple times and still found a way to become successful. The key is learning from those failures and then not making the same mistake twice. There are few failures, outside of breaking the law or doing something immoral, that we can’t come back from and live another day. Sure, there are many stories of those who bet the farm on a direction or strategy and end up bankrupt, but even they are able to find their way back if they work hard enough at what they are trying to achieve.  We have seen many a company that is on their last few dollars when they found a new way to hang in there and grow.  A few weeks ago we saw one of the largest banks in the world, pay a substantial fine for manipulating the financial markets.  It’s a significant black eye, but even this type of failure will likely be overcome and if they don’t dwell on the problem but instead work hard to do right, then they are likely to have this pass.  It is always interesting to me to see which companies recover and which ones seem to never bounce back. As best as I can tell it is about being true recovering and doing all that can be done to return to the public and employee’s trust.  And of course, failures that are just because of trying something new, then “try, try and try again” is important to follow.

God knows that we will fail and He always gives us ways back to Him.  If we are trying to live for Him and we fail and then ask Him to bring and bounce us back, He will….every time!  All we have to do is listen to Him. When we work for God’s glory His definition of success is in the continued quest to be closer and more like Him.  When we work for God’s glory there is not any better work.  He cares about every little thing and desires us to strive with all that we have.  So, today as we go to our offices know that we have to try, try and try again!

Reference:  Matthew 15:10 (New Living Translation)