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 2098: Integration

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“To the faithful you show yourself faithful; to those with integrity you show integrity.”

Companies that come together talk about integration challenges and opportunities.  The challenge part is under-weighted way to often and companies make one mistake after another trying to integrate people, cultural norms and processes.  And then we wonder why so many acquisitions fail.  The same integration challenges occur with new people into a company or team.  We need to think about the word “integration” in the most holistic of ways we can and then pay attention to each and every detail, that is if we think we are going to succeed at ever making one plus one equal even two.

I was given a really interesting group of writings from The Centre for Marketplace Theology.  This notion of integration was explored as it relates to our personal integrity.  Gunter Krallman was quoted from his book, Mentoring for Mission: “Persons of integrity will shun hypocrisy, partially or hidden agendas, scheming and shady financial dealings; they will not break promises or other commitments, neither rationalize personal failure and guilt or take advantage of others.”  I read that and thought to myself, this is one of the best definitions of integrity for true integration into all parts of our work and lives that I have ever read.  And I also thought, how hard it is to live up to this standard! But then, we also know that Jesus exemplified this for us throughout His life of pure integrity and He is there is to help us if we do make the attempt.

Reference: 2 Samuel 22:6 (New Living Translation)