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 791: Side-By-Sides

purposed worKING No Comments

“A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person’s strength.”

Train and airport clubs and terminals are the best place to hear about what is going on in business. I guess you might call it eavesdropping but I like to listen to the conversations around me. I was sitting in a train station in Baltimore this week waiting on the train into D.C. when I heard a woman, who it sounded like was talking to her boss, explaining the side-by-side proposal she had sent in. She was detailing the left hand side of the proposal as the worst case scenario and the right hand side as the best case scenario. I have no idea what kind of business she is in, but the proposal had to do with a sales prospect. After giving the overview of what she was thinking, she then went through both sides. I had to leave then to catch my train, but I was reminded about how many times we are asked to play both sides of an argument to make our point or to explain an approach. To do this well, we have to actually be able to put ourselves into the worst and the best cases and play them out as if they really were happening to us. That is not easy to do, and be realistic. But, we have to if we are going to be successful. It’s something for us to think about as we prepare for anything in our work. We have to become adept at seeing all sides of the issues and to be able to complete thoroughly every side-by-side.

King Solomon tells us that we have our own side-by-side that we must always be cognizant. Those two sides are our attitude and our spirit. Let me cut to the chaste; when we are up, others around us are up; when we are down, others around us are down. It’s that simple. The Christian life is not one of only mountain tops and happiness. But, it is a life of hope and optimism with the security of eternity. So, when we allow our spirit to be broken we are turning our back on what has been given to us. Imagine getting all of the support, financial backing, upward progression, and job security you could ever imagine. And then walking into your bosses office each day down, disgruntled, dissatisfied. For how long would she/he put up with it? Not for long my friend. Our Lord never kicks us out of the office, but does expect that we find a cheerful and positive heart. As we get closer to celebrating and receiving His most special gift to us, let’s be sure that we do a side-by-side evaluation and be on the best side for Him.

Reference: Proverbs 17:22 (NLT)