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 2302: Hidden Values

“For everything that is hidden will eventually be brought into the open, and every secret will be brought to light.”

Let’s just cut to it, all the talk about values and principles don’t mean anything unless we hire, fire and reward based the beliefs and living out of the company values and/or not living them out. The only thing worse than not using the values to hire and reward is not using the values to fire.  Want to make a mockery of those values you put together and shared with everyone?  Just allow someone to violate those values without repercussion. There are plenty of companies and organizations today that are reeling because they turned their eyes away from behaviors that ran counter to their values and now what they only wanted to believe could stay in secret, is not, it’s all in the open. Hidden values are of no value at all.

We also can’t live as if our actions are in secret.  There are no secrets.  So, if we are living as if our values are hidden, then we are not living as Christ has asked us to do. In our workplaces we get the opportunity, every day, to work and live to values that others respect and admire.  And, when we do so, we honor our Lord. The key is that when asked, “Why is it you do things the way you do?”, that we are ready to let others know that we do so because we follow in the footsteps of the One we serve. This, we also we can’t keep hidden.

Reference:  Mark 4:22 (New Living Translation)