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 147: Navigating Waters

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I was talking with an entrepreneur recently and he was asking my opinion on where to focus the strategy of a new business. He asked if I thought it would be better to launch his business in the red water or the blue water. I had not heard those choice descriptions before so I listened as he described them both. Red water was launching into where there was already a proven business market that investors would be able to clearly recognize. But, it is called red water he said, because there is also already competition and the water is churning with the fights that occur when the sharks are already circling and feeding. That sounded pretty ominous so I was curious to how he would describe blue water. Blue water is beyond the competition and out in the waters where we don’t know if a business idea is viable or not. As I listened, I understood the metaphors and we talked about the pros and cons of both. As I thought more about this later many of the ideas we have to progress and grow our businesses can be categorized into either the red water or blue. While the blue water seems, on the surface, more attractive it can take a long time to get out to the blue waters and once you are out there, you have all the risks and dangers of being alone with no one else to learn from and you also burn a lot of fuel and expense to get there and back. Whether it be blue or red, it is a safe bet that the water is also deep and deep waters can create anxiety, fear of the unknown, and more chance that if something does go wrong that survival will be harder. While these all seem like extremes, take a moment and think about the challenges that are facing you at work right now, this week or this year? Anything that is worth doing is hard and comes with the waters that we may not want to have to navigate. It’s not hard to find someone in the office who would describe their past week as “rough sailing”. It happens to all of us and it happens often. When we are out there in the rough waters what do we have to grab onto and help us not capsize. God gives us his own promise about what we can expect if we are in the deep waters and we call upon him. He says in Isaiah 43:2l; “When you go through deep waters, I will be with you “. Today you may be heading out into the red, blue, rough and deep waters of your job and responsibilities. As you head there take the promise of God with you and know that even in the deepest of deep waters He is right there with you at all times!

Reference: Isaiah 43:2 (New Living Testament)