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 1055: Patience Over Power

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“It is better to be patient than powerful…”

There was lots of talk last week about Apple considering building a lower end iphone to compete with Samsung in this category.  Apparently, Samsung is beating them considerably in market share and they want to respond.  Since that report, there have been contradictions to this and that Apple will not chase this market. Apple may be the only company in the world who could cause controversy and news about entering a new market segment.  Those analysts and shareholders who want to see Apple stock price get back to knocking on the door of $700 want Apple to broaden and grow market share.  Consumers and Apple purists worry that if Apple starts chasing market share that they will lose their maniacal focus on innovation, product and quality.  Anyone who followed the company remembers the days that Apple had 4% share in the personal computer space and Steve Jobs wouldn’t budge on his direction for the company, regardless of how little the share.  Steve Jobs was not one who was known for patience, but in the strategic direction of the company that patience and deliberate moves paid off.

Our jobs are not set up to reward patience over power. If we are too patient in our career moves then we risk missing out on the chance to move up.  If we move too quickly then we could end up letting our impetuous natures get the better of us.  A good test of whether or not we are letting patience or power rule is to ask ourselves how we “feel”?  If we are feeling like we are taking an overly controlling power ourselves versus continuing to our the power in God’s hands, then we may not be patient enough.  Our world of work and life is all about “now” so we need to be sure that we are not letting ourselves power through and not being patient enough.  If faced with one of these moments today let’s do our best to keep patience winning out over power.

Reference: Proverbs 16:32 (New Living Translation)