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 287: Throw Off The Covets

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I have a friend who just lost out on the job as the senior HR Executive for the one of the “hot” companies in the alternative energy/transportation space. She was called out of the blue by a recruiter who talked her into considering the role, interviewing, falling in love with the company and the management team, preparing on how to communicate her departure from the very good company and very good job that she has now, and emotionally being in the new role. She had gone as far as seeing herself in the new job and she was playing it all out in her mind. Then, last week, after she had gone through all of the interviews and was waiting for the offer to be delivered to her, she got a call from the recruiter that the company had decided to go with someone else for the position. I read the email from her and I braced myself as I scrolled down the message. I expected to hear the disappointment and the border-line anger jump off of the page. But, lo and behold, it didn’t, she didn’t. Instead, what I read was a very mature and gracious acceptance of the fact that “maybe, it just wasn’t meant to be”. She then went on to write, and I think say to herself through her note to me, that she works for a great company, she likes her job, she loves her team, and respects her boss, so why should she fret? She said, “I felt honored to be in the consideration, now back to work”. I say, “wow”, because she is, in my experience, one in ten who can take this attitude. Too many times to count in my career have I watched job and career envy eat someone up from the inside out. If they didn’t get the job or the promotion, or someone else looks like they are getting ahead of them, or they feel like they should be the one to get the next promotion, etc., they let coveting take over. We know from the earliest of our Bible teachings that we are not to covet and we most always put that in the context of other physical possessions, etc. But, we can also put that job that someone else got, that promotion that got away from us, that extra bonus payment that a co-worker received, that consulting assignment that a competitor won, all in the bucket of things that we shouldn’t covet. My friend is not a believer, but in her situation, she acted like one. As believers and followers of Jesus, we have to be the same way. If you are right now covered with coveting, today would be the day to throw off the covets and let your true faith and assurances shine through.

Reference: Exodus 20:17 (New Living Testament)