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 1492: Getting Everyone Up To Same Speed

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“Are we not all children of the same Father? Are we not all created by the same God?”

I presented a session recently on how to lead a successful volunteer board meeting. One of my tenants, and one of the hardest to achieve is how to keep everyone at the same level of knowledge and learning.  So, last week I was telling others how to do this and then a few days later I was sitting in a board meeting where I was brand new and without an orientation.  I knew that the questions I was asking were “newbie” questions and regardless of how “good” they were (as described by the Board Chair) they were questions that had there been a pre-meeting of all the new Board Members, before intermingling the veterans with the novices, I’d have hopefully inquired in a more contextualized way.  I’ve run many a meeting where everyone didn’t read the materials, or they hadn’t thought about what we were doing since the last meetings until they were driving to this one.  What is at stake when everyone is not up to speed and at the same level of knowledge and understanding is that some serious time gets wasted by those who were prepared.  And with each minute that is wasted, we lose a little bit of their engagement and enthusiasm.  Nothing is worse than time lost and we can avoid that if we just spend a little extra time bringing everyone to the same speed.

I’ve been fortunate to know some deep Bible scholars.  These are men and women who forgot more about what they knew than I will ever know.  I’ve also met prayer warriors who when they pray over you, you can almost feel the Holy Spirit through their hands.  And, I have met those who know little and are early in their journey with the Lord who when they love on others, it is so genuine and real that you can’t help but be moved.  We are fortunate that God meets us where we are and doesn’t feel that His time is wasted when we are striving to become closer.  When we stumble today (we always do) don’t worry that we are falling behind.  Just ask Him to start us all over and keep bringing us along, at His speed for us.

Reference: Malachi 2:10 (New Living Translation)