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 2958: Unhealthy Competition

“Don’t rejoice when your enemies fall; don’t be happy when they stumble.”

I’ve long encouraged those who are competing to know each other in hopes that with healthy competition the tide rises and brings up all boats.  We are seeing right now in the tech world the other side of that as the competition has become unhealthy and dominating.  Sadly, we the consumers get caught in the crossfire and as companies relish and pound their chests with their winner take all victories while others go out of business in defeat.  I’m concerned that we have lost the generations of those who led with healthy competition as their standard and those who are just now learning how to conduct themselves in business seeing only dog eat dog as the way to compete.  Also sadly, it may well take outside forces and influences to assure healthy competition going forward.

We have the choice each day in how we will conduct ourselves and compete in the marketplace and workplace.  It will be hard to be recognized as those we are trying to bring glory to God as our purpose for working if we fall into the ways of unhealthy competition.  The Proverb is clear, if we are not to rejoice in the failures of enemies, then how are we to respond and treat our coworkers or fellow industry competitors when they run into problems?  If we are rejoicing or happy, then it is us who need to work to become healthy competitors.

Reference:  Proverbs 24:17 (New Living Translation)