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 2142: Normalized

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“And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul?”

There is lots of use of the word, “Normalized” right now. Our political process has brought this word to the forefront and we now are debating what is to be “normal” and what is not.  I can reflect on a lifetime of things being normalized as any generation can.  It was within my lifetime that we wore coats and ties to travel on airplanes.  The same was done when going to work.  Small example, but an example of how things change to become normal.  It was not that long ago that someone new into a company had no access to the CEO other than to go make an appointment to see him/her, which would never happen because many layers of authority and what was considered “normal” protocol would prevent it from occurring. But today, the intern can send an email or Slack message to the CEO, with an idea, a complaint or a suggestion and the intern expects a reply.  Yes, we are always normalizing, but the question we have to ask is, “are we normalizing to where we want to go”?  As I see it, there is only one litmus test to normalizing and that is a set of values and principles that are subscribed to by leadership that create the guardrails and boundaries to test where the normalizing is occurring.  And so it goes that we need to become more stringent and cautious so that we don’t find ourselves normalizing to a place we really wish we weren’t.

God’s Word provides us a wealth of knowledge as to where we should allow normalization and where we shouldn’t. Christian author and speaker, Jen Hatmaker was quoted from Facebook and Instagram about normalization when she cried out about the normalization of words and behaviors from our political figures that she wouldn’t accept from her seventh-grade son.  I believe that God didn’t call us to be a part of the normalization of those things that run against the values that He set for us to follow and the best way we can do this to not allow those things around us to become normal for us.  Our own example is the most powerful one that we have and how we conduct ourselves daily in our business and life is setting for others what we consider to be normal, or not.  Yes, it is a burden to have to think about this daily when others who are not believers never give it a second-thought.  But, that is where we are not to be normal.

Reference: Matthew 16:26 (New Living Translation)