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 729: Strategic Decisions, Part 1

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Run from anything that stimulates youthful lust. Follow anything that makes you want to do right.”

When faced with strategic direction decisions we really have one of three decisions to be made; To lead, follow, or get out of the way. Part one of this three part series, is about getting out of the way.

When we find our businesses engaged in business that is not paying out, or the market has changed and what we once were offering is not of value anymore, or may even be on the way to becoming obsolete. You’d think that these are obvious choices and that you could see the changes coming from a mile away, but it’s not that easy. If it was there wouldn’t be the angst in the music, newspaper, and publishing industries. Technology is usually the driver of these types of changes that then change consumer behavior and expectations. It wasn’t that long ago that we expected someone else to pump our gas for us, or to see and talk to a live bank teller when we deposited our paychecks. We also used to have others who typed our memos and copied them for us for distribution. The point is that we in our businesses we need to be able to be honest without ourselves and know when to get out of the way and change our strategic direction. In the start-up world, a very good venture capitalist who I know and admire, Mike Maples, coined the term, “Pivot”. To pivot means to be able to shift and change our directions and business models quickly to meet market demands and/or to get out of the way of competition that we know are going to succeed beyond what we are doing.

In our own lives, sometimes we need to also make the decision to get out of the way. If we are aware enough to know those things that tempt us or we know our weak points, then we can know when to get out of harm’s way. There are many things of this world, and especially in the world of work that are there to cause us to slip or make the mistake that would compromise who we want to be or what we say we are. In those cases, the best move for us is to get out of the way of harm and trouble. It is not fear or lack of courage, it is about being smart and knowing enough about our weaknesses, and then being smart. We can, and should, be calling on God to not only protect us but to make us self-aware.

Reference: 2 Timothy 2:22 (New Living Testament)