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 2317: “Unlock”

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“For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

The business world loves a good buzzword.  I’m not sure why, but I hear the word, “Unlock” more than before.  In context it goes like this, “We just need to unlock the problem.”, “I had a real unlocking of my thinking over the weekend.”, “If we can only unlock the potential of this company.”  Unlocking is the latest for “solving” or “breakthrough”.  All mean the same; to get us to a place where we want to be, but might be stuck today.  I like the idea of unlocking as I can stop and consider what has me “locked” in my thinking or openness to a new idea.  We need words to inspire us and to hang onto that create common language for us to work efficiently.  What words are in our company’s vocabulary that catalyze people to think bigger, better, faster, and more productively?  If you can’t think of many (or any), then it might be time to find a few.

Whenever I read Jesus’ words in the book of Matthew as He uses the metaphor of a door as our way to Him, I am astoundingly reminded that there is no lock on this door.  If He was walking the Earth today maybe He would have said, “For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who searches, finds. And to everyone who enters, the site will always be open with no password needed.”  Or, maybe not.  A door is timeless and the idea of Jesus telling me, and all of us, that we can enter freely reinforces that it only ourselves that lock the door on Him, never the other way around.  Today, we will all encounter a locked door, probably many, both figuratively and literally.  Each time that happens today let’s remind ourselves to continually unlock ourselves to Him!

Reference:  Matthew 7:8 (New Living Translation)