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 1165: Training?

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“So let us stop going over the basic teachings about Christ again and again. Let us go on instead and become mature in our understanding. Surely we don’t need to start again with the fundamental importance of repenting from evil deeds and placing our faith in God.”

Most corporate training only scratches at the surface of what we need to know to do our jobs fully.  We get the basics of what and how and then we move on and maybe for years we don’t get retrained or more deeply grown or developed.  When we think back about the training that was most of an impact on our jobs, it is that training that actually grew us more as human beings than just make us a better worker.  When this happens, we are actually able to take that learning, apply it to our work and we ultimately become better all the way around.  That is training that sticks.  I was with a friend this last week who was telling me about a holistic session that his partnership did with the senior partners in the company.  It started with a comprehensive physical examination, moved through life expectations and motivations, and then ended up with applying all of this to how each individual would change to be better in their jobs over the next five years.  My friend was effusive about how significant this was to him.  Forget all of the “training”, instead let’s send our people off to “learning”.  

In Hebrews, we are challenged to move our spiritual lives from basic training to true learning and deepening.  Just like our corporate training, we can hang around the surface and go through the motions and receive very little that sticks, or we can dive in deep looking for spiritual breakthrough that will lead to real growth and life applications.  We don’t go to work every day just looking for the same old, same old, so why would we go about our Kingdom work this way?  Let’s consider honestly today what level of “training” or “learning” we are really pursuing?

Reference:  Hebrews 6:1 (New Living Translation)