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 2078: Stages of Adoption (Part 5 – Cynics)

“The man answered, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

There are five types of adopters to new ideas, programs, processes or technology.  We’ve looked at Innovators, Fast Followers, Pragmatists and Conservatives. Today, we will explore our final stage of adoption, the Cynics.

Every company has their collection of cynics.  It’s not whether they are there, it’s how many and whether or not they have a voice that can be heard.  I was in a meeting last week where the President of the company described their executive team as the juror box filled with 12 Angry Men.  In the play and the movie the jurors spend their time and energy trying to persuade the one out-layer.  And so do many of us as we work hard to get the one person, many time the cynic, to get one board.  The energy expended can be enormous and wouldn’t we rather spend that energy on the positive and uplifting?

Jesus left us with the two commandments and to love our neighbor as ourselves one cannot be a cynic.  Cynics are not persuasive.  Cynics leave others not feeling good about themselves.  Cynics can drag down large groups. So, what are we after here?  We can’t reflect the love of Jesus if we are known to be a cynic. So, when the time comes today to be on board or to be the cynic, let’s not be the latter.

Reference: Luke 10:27 (New Living Translation)