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 148: White Knight

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My wife and I had dinner last week with a long-time friend who founded and has run his own advertising agency for the past 16 years. This past year he was approached about potentially selling his firm to one of the largest advertising companies in the world. He struggled with this for a long time to see if he was really ready to give up his own company to become the employee of someone else. He made the decision to allow the company to be bought and to date he seems really happy with the decision. Of course, he owns the company so it was ultimately his decision to do as he wanted. When public companies get acquired it is many times because the acquirer puts enough leverage on the shareholders of the target company that the existing management team has to take the offer, even though they may want to continue to operate independently. And then sometimes, being bought is just the best thing all the way around. That is what happened to my company a year ago and had we not been acquired we would not have been able to stand alone and survive. And in those cases, you do what is best for the company, the shareholders and the employees and you trust in God that the right things will happen. In all the above cases some party believes they are the “white knight” who has come riding in to save the day. To the other side it may not look that way, but there is truth that in most cases, they are there to make things better. There are many times in our work lives where we are no longer in control and someone else comes in and “takes over”. It may be the new owners of the company or it may just be a new boss that we are assigned. Our ability to flex with the situation is many times the difference between our success and failure after the change. We are given a word on how to handle these type of situations when Jesus speaks in John 16:33; “I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” Regardless of your situation at work and life, we have the true and ultimated white knight on our side. He not only gets to takeover, when we let him, he also “overcomes” all of the issues that we have, regardless of the situation. So, today if it feels like someone else is trying to “take over” on you at work, reach to God’s Words and hold on to them tightly. He will overcome whatever it is you are challenged with today.

Reference: John 16:33 (New Living Testament)