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 3K285: Focusing On The Numbers

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“The the Lord turned to to him and said, ‘Go with with the strength you have…I am sending you”.

The focus on profits and correlating layoffs are back in the news. In business it is all about the numbers. We are working to grow revenue, expand margins, increase profits, decrease costs, even counting people as “headcount”. Supposedly the numbers never lie (don’t we wish) and all day long we stare at numbers and try to figure out how to make them better. In some instances the numbers just won’t get better and we find ourselves stabbing into the dark to try another approach, a different solution, anything we can come up with to try and rectify the problem. It’s hard and it gets harder and harder as the numbers get worse.

The great story of Gideon in the book of Judges is the same story. Gideon had the numbers stacked against him as God told him to go to battle. He kept looking at his headcount of soldiers vs. the numbers of Midianites and he told God that he was outnumbered and that he couldn’t go into battle with so few less warriors than the opposition. God agreed that something was wrong with the numbers and he took care of the problem, but not the way Gideon imagined. God kept narrowing down the number of men that Gideon had until he was well beyond deficient staffing. From the outside looking in, it looked like he was going to fight with overwhelming odds against him and was going to battle with little more than a skeleton crew. But what happens? God delivers a victory with far fewer resources than anyone would have ever humanly planned. And, from the story we learn another valuable lesson about numbers problems. When it looks like the numbers are stacked against us and there doesn’t seem any way to win, what God is calling on us to do is to listen to Him and what he said to Gideon. God wants us, when the odds are against us, and the numbers look worse than bleak, to remember that He is there and through our faith He will provide strength and like He did in the case of Gideon make strength in the numbers. Today may be another day when you are seeing nothing but red numbers all around you and you don’t have the answer or solution that others are expecting from you. This is the time to turn over the numbers to God and let Him give you strength you need to make the numbers work.

Reference: Judges 6:14 (New Living Translation)