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 2812: Benched

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“One day the Lord said to Moses, “Climb one of the mountains east of the river, and look out over the land I have given the people of Israel.  After you have seen it, you will die like your brother, Aaron…”

Can you imagine that you can see where it is that a project or your company needs to go but you are then told that you won’t be there to see it get there.  It would feel like getting “benched” and not being able to participate or play your role.  It happens.  Someone gets promoted above us, we get transferred, our boss gets moved or replaced and then we don’t get to do what we thought was going to happen next, there is a budget cut or a reduction in force and there we sit, knowing exactly what could be, but we won’t get there. It’s a similar feeling to those who had big plans in the coming months, but what was on the calendar is not to be and likely won’t be rescheduled.  And so, this is our time and we have to choose on how we will respond?  Will we respond negatively or positively to being benched?  It’s an important question and learning because as much as we would like to think that we will never be benched again in our careers, it will happen.

I’ve been wrestling on why God had to take Moses to the mountain and show him the promised land before Moses was to die.  Was it because God wanted to remind him once again that he was being punished, or was it a gift to Moses that at least he was given the opportunity to know and see that the journey was soon to end for his people? I think Moses must have responded for the most part positively as he immediately asked God to appoint a leader to shepherd the Israelites into Canaan. At the very least, Moses did not shirk his responsibility and leadership role as he wanted to assure that everyone would be taken care of once he was gone.  And maybe that is the lesson for us now when we feel we are being benched.  As best we can we should find the positives and at the least we need to make sure that we do all we can for things to finish well and that others are well taken care of.

Reference: Numbers 27: 12-13 (New Living Translation)