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 3K261: RTO

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“Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law.”

Yes, if you noticed, I took a week off from writing. I felt I needed it and now am back feeling energized. Thanks for your patience. What is it about a little time off that clear our head?

I once read a study that we are 40% more productive if we work away from our regular environment. That could mean in today’s world, a different coffee shop, a different floor in our office building, or a different room in our house.  The point is that shaking it up a bit can free our minds.  The debate and arguments of getting people back to return to the office (RTO) is still raging.  Disney, Starbucks and others have tipped to greater than three days in the office.  Others are still looking at 1-2 days and Twitter asked their employees in Seattle to always work from home to cut costs.  It’s all over the board.  A recent Gallup poll found, “34% of remote-capable workers want to work from home permanently and just 3% want to work in the office full time.”  What I find most interesting in all of this is that there is a perceived (maybe it is real) power game being played out between employers and employees with RTO policies.  It seems that the, “Tell me what to do and I won’t want to do it” mentality is being exposed en masse. It’s a fine line we walk these days with policies and procedures, but I always come back to the same Golden Rule approach when asking people to change; treat people like you’d want to be treated yourself and everything will work out just fine.

There is another side of the Golden Rule that, while not explicit, that can happen.  If we don’t treat others like we’d want them to treat us, we might well get the treatment back from them that we wish we hadn’t.  Said otherwise, what goes around can come around.  We get the choices today on how we will treat others.  Will we apply the Golden Rule or will we take our chances that one day (maybe soon) the backlash will come?  The decisions we make on how we treat others come with consequences.

Reference: Matthew 7:12 (New Living Translation)