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 674: Out Of Stock

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“When Jesus then lifted up his eyes, and saw a great company come unto him, he saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat? And this he said to prove him: for he himself knew what he would do” (John 6:5-6).

In business one of the worst things that can happen is to be “out of stock”. This is a retail term that comes from the moment when the shelf is empty. If a shelf is empty because there is no product, then there won’t be sales and somewhere a consumer is unhappy. Out of stock issues can come from both problems and opportunities. Problems that cause us to miss production and fulfillment demands can be fixed and are typically identifiable and with some better planning and execution not happen again. There are also times when the product is in such high demand that we just can’t keep up. We can be fooled into believing that this is a good problem, but not really. If we miss the momentum wave and then lose the curiosity or interest of the consumer then we run the risk of never getting them back. Staying in stock, staying up to date (if running a service), and staying ahead to never go out of stock is a set of planning and operational skills that need to be resident in an organization.

In our own lives we also can feel like we are running “out of stock”. These can be times when our emotional stock is low, our energy stock is depleted, our relationship strength is faltering, or our confidence level is emptying. As believers we never need to worry about God allowing us to run out of stock. When the Disciples were faced with not enough food to feed the multitudes, it wasn’t just about being out of stock with food, it was also about their reputation and the their duties to Jesus being held accountable. From the outside looking in it probably looked like there had been poor planing and someone should have thought ahead to plan for the feeding of this many people. But, when that didn’t happen and the Disciples had nothing else to fall back on, Jesus was right beside them with the answer and the solution. Now, He had to say it a few times and then prove it to them, but they finally got it and taught us a lesson. That lesson today is that if we truly believe and have a strong enough faith, then we never need to worry about running “out of stock”.

Reference: John 6: 5-6