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 1934: (Dis)Honesty

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“Keep me from lying to myself; give me the privilege of knowing your instructions.”

A documentary opened this last weekend in New York City titled, “(Dis)Honesty – The Truth About Lies”.  The premise comes from academic research that proves that big lies, told by people can be traced back to the person themselves fault line of having told many small, or white-lies, earlier in life.  This makes sense to me as we see when people fabricate their backgrounds like lying about their education and then throughout time they have to build on that lie until one day it catches up with them.  The documentary is to set us thinking about how important it is to be truthful in the small things, and to ourselves, so that we don’t end up in a pattern or habit of telling lies.  It’s usually never that someone decides in the big issues to be dishonest unless they have tried dishonesty in the past and it has worked out for them.  Once in the big “jam” they then default and tell another lie.  This is why it is important to nip dishonesty in the workplace in the bud and rid the culture of those who are dishonest.  It sounds harsh, but it is important on many levels.  So, if you see a co-worker who shades the truth in anything, no matter how small or insignificant, then be on the watch out because a major failure may soon be on the horizon.

“The reality is that we all have the potential of being bad”.  That is a quote from Dan Ariely, a professor and one on the film’s producers.  What he is saying is what we know; that we all are by nature sinners.  It is only through the mercy and grace of God that we are spared and allowed to be forgiven and try again to be better.  Yes, we all fall and make our mistakes and tell our “white lies”, but we don’t need a documentary (although it never hurts to remind ourselves of the damages that can be done by lying) to know that we are to live in and with only the truth.  We talk about the counter-culture that we must create and live in as believers and followers of Jesus.  We can start by being bearers of truth in all that we do.

Reference: Psalm 119:29 (New Living Translation)