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 2785: Time To Grow Up

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“When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.”

I mentioned last week Warren Buffett’s classic quote: “When the tide goes out, you can see who is swimming naked”.  Which, by the way is pretty risky and not very mature.  Well, the tide is pretty far out and we are also reminded on why when times are good we are to preserve working capital for the downturns. Not everyone has that luxury I know, but we might as well wrap our minds around this going into the future. We may well be required, like banks have to now do, to show a certain amount of liquidity to cover future business interruptions.  I read a Gallop report about the transformation that startups must do to grow out of their early stage.  I wonder if the findings are not applicable to all of us right now. Five conditions were pointed out that companies growing up should consider:

  • Organizational Alignment
  • Operating Discipline
  • Predictability of Performance
  • Endurance of Shareholders
  • Value Creation

Seems almost too obvious doesn’t it?  It might be that the future is right here, right now, asking for us to grow up.

When the tide recedes in our professional and personal lives we have to learn to swim really fast, or we fall back upon what we learned and we are forced to grow up quickly.  So many times in life we hang onto those things of our youth and past, but really what we are to do is to look to the future and be ready, as best we can, to swim above the receding tide. It might be that we are still holding onto some childish things that God is telling us within these circumstances that now is the time to grow up.

Reference: 1 Corinthians 13:11 (New Living Translation)