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 2443: Short Memories

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“Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem sixteen years. He did not do what was pleasing in the sight of the Lord his God, as his ancestor David had done.”

Wow, do we have short memories when it comes to business cycles and mistakes of the past. Our economic cycles are short, but we tend to make the same mistakes over and over.  I often wonder why and most of the time can only chalk it up to the fact that there isn’t any institutional memory, or strong enough voices, to remind a new generation that this happened before and if we stay on the same path, it will happen again.  Add into it that we have human tendency to believe that each generation of business leaders think that because they are younger, smarter and better educated, that they will get it right without having to learn from the past or call upon those who have been there prior. I suspect that even today you, or someone in the company, is working on an initiative or approach that if some time and energy would be expended to dig into the past, you’d find that what is being attempted, or some variation of it, has been tried before.  What could we learn if we would only lengthen our corporate memories?  We would learn a lot and we would save lots of time and money by just slowing down enough to find out what has already come before us.

The Old Testament Kings of Israel and Judah had really short memories.  Each successive King would be instructed by a prophet of the will and direction of God, taking over from their prior King who suffered a defeat, falling or death from not following the direction that they had been given.  The new King would start off okay and then the, “I am the King now” syndrome would kick in, memory would be brushed aside and they would fall into the same sinful ways as their predecessors, ultimately their reigns also ending in the same disastrous ways. It’s hard to read, but just as hard to be reminded that we are given these stories because this is our way.  We think we have it right with God, then things start going well and we forget from where he have come and then we lessen our listening and dependence on Him, ending up back to where we started, or worse.  We are not well served when we think we can become king over our lives.  It is only the way it is supposed to be when we keep Him on the throne and allow Him to be our King!

Reference: 2 Kings 16:2 (New Living Translation)