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 1481: Must

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“Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry.”

I watched an executive lose their cool without challenge, even though everyone knew the anger was out of place and uncalled for.  A week later, one of the executives direct reports did something similar without anyone saying anything about the behavior.  Anyone want to guess what happens at the next level down within this company?  There is nothing attractive or engaging about an angry person.  But, we let it happen way too often.  We’d all be a lot better off with less anger in the workplace.  We’d all be better off if we’d have a company value…”Count to 10″.

Okay, when James give us direction, recognize that he didn’t say, “please”.  Instead, he said we, “must”.  Let’s put some more must in our days with more listening, slower to speak and a lot slower to get angry.  If we do, we will be different and others will say to themselves, “I must find out why they are like they are”.

Reference: James 1:19 (New Living Translation)