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 1433: The Credit Department

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“God saved you by His grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.”

There is an invisible and stealth group in our companies and organizations that we never acknowledge openly, but all are hoping that they notice us.  It is the Credit Department.  “Wait”, you say, “We have a credit department and I know the people who work there.”  But, this isn’t the Credit group that collects accounts receivables, this is the secret team who allocate credit for work being done and being sure that those who are supposed to, get their due credit.  “But wait”, you say, “Whoever these people are they are horrible at their jobs, because I never get the credit I deserve”.  And so we identity the problem.  Across, through and inside of any organization there are always people who think they should be getting more credit than they are for their work completed and they look and think of this as a zero-sum game where one person getting credit is robbing another.  And yes, there are even credit thieves who spend time and energy making sure that they take credit when they shouldn’t. But, there are also those who sit between the seams and love to give and dole out credit to others.  These are the ones who should get more credit than all as they are the strongest counterbalance to other forces that can cause internal strife and conflict.

God has given each of us His gift and that gift we can’t begin to take credit for, or in fact we are missing the gift all together.  It’s a great lesson for us to carry with us into our work.  What comes of God, we can’t act as though we own or have made it happen.,  When we do, we are robbing others from seeing what God can do in their lives.  When someone sees us trying to take credit, then we are only leaving them with the sense that we depend on ourselves more than the Lord for our success and accomplishments.  I am not saying that we should walk around all day at work with “Praise the Lords” for every action, but I am saying that our attitude, spirit, and appreciation can be reflective of where credit is due and how God continues to provide.

Reference: Ephesians 2:8 (New Living Translation)