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 3K123: Seriously?

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“True humility and fear of the Lord lead to riches, honor, and long life”

My Spidey senses go up when I see someone taking themselves too seriously.  It can show up in lots of ways; easily offended, being demanding, acting entitled, refusing to do things that one thinks is below them, expecting everyone else to conform to their wishes and ideas.  For a brief moment it seemed like Elon Musk would be joining the Twitter Board of Directors.  I thought that it would be a good thing.  But, it appears that he might be taking himself too seriously and will instead sit outside of the company (as the largest shareholder) and likely toss in grenades versus having gone inside and worked with others on the Board to move the company in the direction that he thought was better.  On the inside he would have been one among others.  On the outside he can remain one on his own.  We will see, but this is not the first time I have seen this scenario play out and sadly, it seldom ends well.

We can’t be truly humble if we take ourselves too seriously and it is true humility that we are to strive towards.  Today and almost every day we are given a chance to either take ourselves too seriously or practice humility and serve others as we subordinate maybe what we desire.  It can be the smallest of things like waiting for someone else to express their point of view, or letting someone else take the credit or even just let someone else take the lead.  In our purposed worKING for Him, we should be checking our egos at the door.

Reference: Proverbs 22:4 (New Living Translation)