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 1963: A Puzzle

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“So they went in, but they didn’t find the body of the Lord Jesus. As they stood there puzzled, two men suddenly appeared to them, clothed in dazzling robes.”

There is much in our work that is puzzling that we are always trying to solve and if we do find the solution, we then try to replicate and instill this in our cultures.  Author and moral philosopher, Jonathan Haidt, questions in his book, “The Righteous Mind”, this: “…leadership is not even the more interesting hand; it’s no puzzle to understand why people want to lead.  The real puzzle is why people are willing to follow”.  If we can solve this puzzle, then we unlock much of the secret to corporate success.  It might be that we have been trying to solve the wrong puzzle all this time by asking the wrong questions and to the wrong people.

There are those who would say that it is dangerous (and some say wrong) to ask the question of ourselves why we follow Jesus. I sometimes wonder if when I ask myself the question, if my faith is not strong enough.  A long time ago I learned that the best way to re-engage employees who were questioning their loyalty to a company, was to send them out to recruit for future employees (to where they graduated from college was the best).  Almost without exception they came back to the company reinvigorated and more enthused about the company and their place within the organization.  The corollary for us is that when we ask the question of why we follow Jesus, answer out loud to others and we will hear back in a way that reinforces and grows our faith.  When we tell others what God has done for us, we are reassured and reinforced in why we follow Him. We will also find that our puzzlement will be answered each every time!

Reference:  Luke 24: 3-4 (New Living Translation)