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 2845: Overbuilding

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“The Lord was very angry with Solomon, for his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel….”

There is such a things as overbuilding.  The commercial real estate industry is feeling it now.  Office spaces and retail locations are now in an abundance of supply and that is going to cause a massive change in the economics for those who were used to working and investing under the mantra “If you build it they will come”.  We are seeing the effects already and we can expect more fallout to occur.  We also tend to overbuild things in our own work and lives.  What could have been enough, wasn’t and so we add on a little more and then some more, and if we can, we just keep going.  I’m always stunned at the number of the rich and famous who aren’t that anymore because they overbuilt houses and and their belongings to a point where they couldn’t service the debt with their cash flow. The same happens with those running startups.  What was a great product begins to get bloated and overbuilt and before long the product and/or business implodes on itself. The effects of overbuilding are not pretty and we’d be wise to consider how much we need to get the job done and leave the rest for later.

King Solomon had the greatest empire in history.  Wise beyond any other man, he amassed riches and belongings like never seen before or after.  We read the account in 1 Kings that he just kept building and building.  He even built out (what seems really different now) over 700 wives and 300 concubines and it was that overbuilding that finally caught up with him as he drifted from his one focus, which was to be on worshiping and following God.  His is a cautionary tale for all of us; no matter what we are given, earned or able to do, we can fall into the trap of overbuilding and when we do, we run the risk of it all being taken from us and worse, we miss out on the blessings that God wants to give us with His graceful and loving, “enough”.

Reference: 1 Kings 11:19 (New Living Translation)