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 1893: Race Together

purposed worKING No Comments

“The purpose of my instruction is that all believers would be filled with love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and genuine faith.”

It was a bold move by Starbucks and I applaud the desire to use their nearly ubiquitous platform to create dialogue about an important topic.  It was in the execution that the strategy faltered.  We were asked to talk about something in a place and at a time that was out of context and felt forced (My favorite quote was from the PBS news host, Gwen Ifill who said something to the effect, “I’m just not ready to talk about race relations before my first cup of coffee).  But, just as it felt contrived, just as importantly was that the barista’s initiating the conversation were not experts on the subject, or as best I can tell, weren’t trained or aligned on what the objective of talking was in the first place.  It might have worked if Starbucks had committed to collecting one word from every customer about race relations and then putting that in a database for later communication or actions.  We would have accepted that baristas were experts in collecting one word (although recently one did write my name as “Roasty” on the cup).  Starbucks’ efforts here should remind us that good ideas with poor execution can equal good turning to bad.

I write often about our witness and if we are professed believers how we are the reflection of our Lord in our workplaces, whether we like it or not. We can learn something from the Starbucks example.  If we are genuine in our love for God, authentic, consistent and committed to our following of Jesus and we show up with that consistency, then we get a chance to talk without judgement about our relationship with Jesus to those who open themselves to us.  But, if we are just the opposite we can more likely expect the responses to our conversation starters to be received much like the coffee consumer who just wants the right order as soon as they can get it so they can get in the car and drive off to somewhere else they want to be.  Let’s look at today as another opportunity to build our credibility for Christ so we are always ready to properly execute with our message when the conversation moment arrives.

Reference: 1Timothy 1:5 (New Living Translation)