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 2025: Common Ground

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“On the day of Pentecostall the believers were meeting together in one place.”

A just promoted CEO was asking me about working spaces and was lamenting on how hard it is to manage people remotely.  I told him that it was important that people in a company share “common ground”.  What typically goes wrong with the remote working scenario is that one side of the working team, or the other, feel like one of the parties isn’t really working, or not working hard enough, or not putting in the correct hours, etc.  So, unless there is “common ground” for them to share there won’t be common understanding of each other.  A friend led his company in the early days with each of the members of the team working out of their own homes.  There were five of them spread across the U.S., but, they created common ground as each day my buddy would log onto five screens in front of him.  One for him to work from and the other four were individual Skype accounts going directly to the other four people on the team.  And in each of their work spaces they had the same, so that all day long it was like all five of them were together. Or, they could just talk to each other. individually if needed.  It was brilliant and more so, it worked like a charm.  No animosity, no wondering who was doing what, or where.  So, whether it is something like that, or a common meeting area, common office hours, etc.  there won’t be a lot of common understanding or common sense decisions being made unless there is shared common ground.

Lots of people wonder today why they need to attend church.  Why not just watch a service online, call it a week and be done with it?  I’m not a Bible scholar by any means, but I know the Bible gives us reasons and direction on what we are to do to deepen our relationship with Christ.  Check out what happens with the Disciples in Acts, Chapter 1-2.  Miraculous things happened to them as the Holy Spirit moved among them.  And where were they?  They were together, sharing many common things like a place to live, food, clothing, etc.  When we are on common ground with other believers, the most uncommon can happen.  It’s why we should attend church this year and also seek out the others in our company who are believers and be sure and spend time together.  Whether it be a set meeting or just lunch together, that common ground might this year, be the start of something extraordinary.

Reference:  Acts 2:1 (New Living Translation)