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 84: Count The Cost…First

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Work is full of lots of “big ideas” and what Collins and Porras call: “BHAGs…Big Hairy Audacious Goals”. We are pushed to come up with these and sometimes we are the ones who are challenging others to do so. There’s nothing wrong with these as they do push us to new limits and help us reach our full potential. There are many great stories about those who invented or achieved the seemingly impossible just because someone else told them that their work to date was “just not good enough”. When we work with, and for, the kind of people who can get the most from us, we tend to like and respect them and we thank them for making us better. At the same time though we need to be sure that we are being realistic in our goal setting and also doing our homework upfront before we commit or promise to deliver. It’s a fine balance as we want to always go above and beyond but at the same time we don’t want to be known as one who consistently sets lofty and unrealistic goals and then ends up not delivering or letting others down. It is actually Biblical to be a realistic planner and expectation setter. We see this in Luke as Jesus was teaching about making commitments to be a follower of Him. He says in Chapter 14: 28-30, “But don’t begin until you count the cost. For who would begin construction of a building without first getting estimates and then checking to see if there is enough money to pay the bills? Otherwise, you might complete only the foundation before running out of funds. And then how everyone would laugh at you! They would say, ‘There’s the person who started the building and ran out of money before it was finished”. These are words to which the wise will listen. There are many things in business that are worse to start and never finish than to never have started in the first place. The stakes are especially high when it comes to those things that can truly effect how people feel about their leaders and the business. I was recently consulting with an organization who wanted to do all the right things but when I looked over the number of initiatives over the past few years that they had started but never completed, one could see a long list of good but because never completed programs that were now corporate shipwrecks. And not surprising to me, but surprising to them, the most recent new programs they had rolled out were received with a jaundiced and skeptical eye. Their reputations as leaders were now built on hollow words and unfulfilled promises. It is not a pretty place to be. As ones who are striving to meld our purpose and our work and use our work as a positive example and platform, we need to think hard about how we set our goals and plans so that we are known to be ones who deliver and don’t over promise or get ahead of ourselves. Each and every time we follow-through, count the cost ahead of time, and then fulfill our commitments we build credibility with others. And one never knows the long-lasting impact of the words and examples from someone who is credible and believable in all they do.

Reference: Luke 14: 28-30 (New Living Testament)