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 2073: Stages of Adoption (Part 1 – Innovator)

“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.  Today, we will begin with the Innovators.  These are the people who will be the ones who actually bring us the “new”.  This means that these types of people not only don’t fear what they may face when they propose something new and different, they actually thrive on creating and sourcing what can be different and/or better.  We all know someone who is like this and while we know that we need them, sometimes they can drive us nuts because they may never act as though they are happy, content or satisfied.  So, it can be hard to balance the reactions to Innovators, but regardless, we need Innovators if anything is going to improve.

Jesus brought more innovation to us than we might give Him credit.  He changed everything, but even Jesus had someone like John the Baptist to pave the way and we can only imagine the ridicule that John the Baptist must have received as spoke about the coming Messiah.  And even when Jesus had begun His ministry He had to say that a prophet from his own town or family is hard to be heard and believed.  We don’t naturally accept those who want to change the way we do things.  It is good for us to remind ourselves of the innovation that Jesus brought to the world and to all of us.  He is one innovator who should be celebrated in how we live each and every day

Reference:  Luke 10:27 (New Living Translation)