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 1259: Matches

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“Your teeth are as white as sheep that are freshly washed. Your smile is flawless, each tooth matched with its twin.”

There may not be a harder technology challenge than finding the perfect match.  Industries have been built from this need; biotech, digital tech, agriculture, just to name a few.  In digital technology we are always hunting for the perfect match, whether that be through dating sites, through job sites, and broadly between retailers/manufacturers and customers.  The perfect match is one where two parties decide they want the same thing. This is hard work and with today’s technology algorithms we get closer and closer to the perfect match.  Some will call them “recommendation” or “discovery” engines, but these are also all about matching what I like to what I might not yet know I will like.  Matching is so important to all that we do that we should ensure that the understanding of the science of matching is resident within our companies.  If we aren’t almost obsessed with the pursuit of the perfect match then we are probably missing out on business.

The Song of Solomon is a love poem and Solomon even speaks of the perfect match. Christ came to the earth to become our perfect match and even today He provides us the continual opportunity to come closer and closer to Him. He is our perfect match and if we spend our focus and energy on matching closer and closer to Him, the rest will fall into place nicely for us.  It’s when we get too fixated on matching to others, or to a job, or to a thing, that we can fall apart. Consider today where you are putting your matching efforts.

Reference: Song of Solomon 6:6 (New Living Translation)