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 2137: Twelve

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“From that time on, Judas began looking for an opportunity to betray Jesus.”

Twelve Jurors, to do justice in a criminal trial, must all agree.  But to get to this agreement, they all need to work together and find a place of common understanding and appreciation of each other.  From all walks of life they come, they listen to the same evidence and testimony and then they pull all of that through their own experience lens and interpret what they have learned, against the law they are given, to come to a unanimous decision.  I have come through this experience and what I have learned is that twelve is a large group.  I learned that even getting twelve to be on time and to all participate equally is hard.  I learned that when twelve come to a place of trust in each other that one of the most important decisions that will be made can be made in unanimity .  I learned that if we can bring the principles of a jury to a business team hat with more time listening and talking to each other, better decisions will be made.

Jesus had twelve Disciples and as we all know, they were not all aligned.  One was not even close.  Instead, he was diametrically opposed to who Jesus was.  As I sat in jury service this week, it made me think that keeping twelve in line was no easy task for Jesus.  I sometimes forget that these were common men and that likely one or more were prone to being tardy.  Or, one or more, didn’t pay full attention at all times and needed to be reminded or go over the directions more than once.  Or, that because of their individual backgrounds and experiences they looked at things differently.  This also reminds me that I remain flawed and as much as when I am in a group (like among twelve) that others see the same flaws in me that I also might see in them.  So, we need to remember today that yes, others are watching for our flaws and trying to figure out if we are aligned with Him, or not.

Reference: Matthew 26:16 (New Living Translation)