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 468: Where Confidence Lies

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Where our confidence lies is too many times with other people. In our jobs we look up to our boss, our bosses’ boss and ultimately to the CEO for the direction of our livelihood. The problem with this is that, regardless of how good of a person or how good they are in their job, people will always let us down. This is just the way it is, because we are all people and we fail physically and all have our faults. This past week we had the example of Mark Hurd, a very good CEO being removed from his position for failing to reports his expenses correctly. We also saw that the CEO of Sara Lee, Brenda Barnes, was having to step down because of an untimely illness. Both, very good CEOs and doing good things for their companies. But for different reasons, one day they were in their job, the next day they weren’t. And throughout both organizations there were undoubtedly people wondering what will happen next with the company and to their own jobs. Their confidence is shaken with the change and the unrest now at the top of the organization. Changing where we allow our confidence to lie is hard to do, but if we find ourselves putting too much confidence in our earthly leaders, we will also find ourselves at some point feeling lost and confused. David wrote of this in Psalm 146: 3-4: “Don’t put your confidence in powerful people; there is no help for you there. When the breathing stops, they return to the earth, and in a moment all of their plans come to an end.” Think about this today and evaluate where you are putting your confidence. If your first thoughts are those about people, then it is time to begin the shift to realigning your confidence to the only One who won’t let you down, who won’t disappear, who won’t change jobs on you, or make a mistake that has Him removed from His position.

Reference: Psalm 146: 3-4 (New Living Testament)