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 1002: Competition

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“When the man saw that he would not win the match, he touched Jacob’s hip and wrenched it out of its socket.”

 All around us in competition.  We can’t open a business site or newspaper and not have competition right in front of us.  Samsung vs. Apple, Coke vs. Pepsi,  Bing vs. Google.  Need I say more?  But what is it about competition that can be harnessed for good and advancement?  A lot in fact.  Business thrives on competition.  We love to know who is the opponent, identify their weaknesses and then go after them, keeping score until we are the victors.  Many a business plan is built on just the simple fact of doing what someone else is doing better, faster, bigger!  Knowing our competition and being able to articulate clearly to everyone in the organization what is the definition of winning over them, is a great thing.  Leaders have it harder in this respect.  If you are number one, then the competition is you and that is harder than being number two. But, all but one doesn’t have that problem, so the rest of us can take the time to find a competitor and then set plans to be better than them.

Inside of organizations and companies there is also competition.  This we must be careful of and personally watch that we don’t get caught up in these games.  We have to be able to set an example as believers and followers of Jesus that we aren’t those who compete with others in order to build ourselves up or tear down the other person. When we are thought about by others we want to be known as the one who builds up our peers and rides above the game of internal competition.  We can’t want to hurt someone else because we can’t win.  In Genesis we read of a wrestling match and we know who finally won.  God will wrestle with us over our competitiveness and guess who ultimately wins out?  We need to be careful that we don’t find ourselves caught up in competition that just doesn’t really matter.

Reference: Genesis 32:25 (New Living Translation)