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 996: Verismo

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“He went in alone and shut the door behind him and prayed to the LORD.”

I was at Starbucks yesterday and I got a look at their new coffee maker called the Verismo.  It’s a one cup coffee maker.  It is sleek and looks very modern and efficient.  But, as I went to make a demo cup of coffee I realized that their new machine uses a proprietary coffee capsule.  It’s not the standard capsule that has become usable across many Keurig and other types of coffee makers.  As I reflected on this, I wondered; “Is this brilliant in the sense that they have so much to offer that they can go it alone and get their consumers to purchase the machine and their own coffee capsules?”, or “Are they overly confident and arrogant that they think that they can create their own hardware and force their consumers to do something new?”  I don’t really know, but at the end of the day, Starbucks has made a decision to give it a go and we will see…can they make it on their own, or will they get caught trying to create something that can’t be created?  It’s the longstanding question – go it alone or follow on with the market and come out on top of the market because there didn’t have to be extra investment to try and create, market, and find consumer adoption on their own?

The question that companies have to ask themselves, we need to ask of ourselves as well. Are we people who will want to go it alone, with all of the risks and dangers that come with being alone, or do we put our full reliance on God and never walk alone?  Walking alone, while it doesn’t make real sense, may be just in our nature and so we have to be brought to situation over invitation to put our reliance and trust in God and to not go it alone.  As we walk into this day, we should take stock of our own “Verismo” strategy.  Are we so big, so powerful, so influential that we can go it alone?  Or, are we ready to give ourselves over to the One who never leaves us alone and actually meet Him with where He wants us to be, alone with Him.

Reference:  2 Kings 4:33 (New Living Translation)