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 2126: A Slow Erosion

purposed worKING No Comments

“Then he added, “Pay close attention to what you hear. The closer you listen, the more understanding you will be given—and you will receive even more.”

One of my favorite and oft-quoted here blogger, Seth Godin, wrote this about how things can change.  He titled his post, “Erosion””

“The Grand Canyon wasn’t created by an earthquake.

While it’s tempting to imagine that the world changes via sudden shocks, that our culture is shifted by dramatic changes in leadership, that grand gestures make all the difference…

It turns out that our daily practice, the piling up of regular actions, the cultural practices and biases that we each choose—that’s what makes change happen.

False promises and urgent reactions are a trap and a sideshow.”

These are wise words from Seth.  We’ve all seen it in our companies when we find ourselves saying, “It just snuck up on us.”  The truth is that few problems ever really sneak up on us.  They get there usually because we either ignore or deny their presence.  We tend to like to treat problems like they are wine, hoping that they will only get better with time.  But, problems are not like wine, they are like milk and once they begin to turn they go bad really fast. And so, we can learn that when the problems do arise, that we have to pay attention, otherwise we just let the erosion continue to occur.

I think Jesus knew a lot about the little things in life, which is why He would take special effort and care to point out the mundane and every day activities to illustrate and magnify His teachings.  We can learn from not only His actual teaching but also from Him that this attention to the small things are a way to not allow our own slow erosion to occur.  I have had enough business and life experience to know that the person who commits fraud, steals, backstabs, fabricates, or causes big problems, isn’t doing any of this for the first time.  By the time things come to light, these people have become practiced over long spans of time and perfected the small cheating, pilfering, gossiping, degrading, etc.  And so it is important that we watch over the little areas of our life that if left unattended or worse, ignored or denied, can overtake us with an erosion of our character and soul.

Reference: Mark 4:24 (New Living Translation)