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 673: Strategic Shifts

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“So be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid and do not panic before them. For the Lord your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you.”

One of the scariest things to do in business is to conduct a real strategic plan exercise. When done right, strategic plans have the input of many stakeholders and should feel like a comprehensive 360 degree look at the business, the market, the opportunities and the challenges. Coming out of the study will be a set of new targets and direction for the organization. Then, whoever is in charge has to answer the questions of “why not?” to all of the great ideas that have been presented. These can be as daunting like, how to double the size of the business in a specified time frame, or adding to or shedding parts of the business, or even as drastic as changing course and entering into new business segments. Whatever they are, they take courage to adopt and fortitude to implement. Someone once told me, “Vision is imagining that which cannot yet be seen.” That is what we do when we make strategic shifts, we vision what cannot yet be seen. That is why it is scary and why we need to be courageous and strong to make the shifts. Businesses, or any organization, need to undertake regular strategic evaluations to stay healthy, pointed in the right direction and growing.

We also should take strategic inventory every now and then to be sure that our lives are pointing the direction that they should. God has given us the direction and the path to follow but are we sure that those things in our life where we spend our time, our energy and our resources are aligned to that plan? It is one thing to know the direction, it is another to align ourselves in that direction. Just like the strategic shifts and the tough decisions a business may have to take, we personally have to make those same hard calls. And yes, sometimes it does take courage. But, God gives us His promise that He will go in front of us so all we have to do is follow Him and He will not fail us or leave us alone. To have that promise should give us all the courage and strength we need to make the necessary and needed strategic shifts in our lives.

Reference: Deuteronomy 31:6 (New Living Testament)