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 1163: Where We Are

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“Then the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

Adam Alter wrote a very interesting article in this past weekend’s New York Times, discussing the influence of who we are being very much shaped by where we are.  Alter draws from the research from James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling who wrote the 1982 Atlantic Monthly article that explained the “Broken Window Theory”, which was broadly popularized by Rudy Giuliani as Mayor of New York City during his campaign to clean up New York. In a nutshell, we human beings are chameleons and we will adapt to the cues and signals around us.  If we are in a dirty and littered location then we will not feel inclined to keep anything neat and organized.  The opposite is also true.  We can take this research into our businesses.  The culture and environment that we create, or let appear without our creation (warning: this is what happens), is all it takes to send the messages of how we want people to work, behave and even take accountability.  A good friend has now gone back into a CEO position after a few years out.  He has returned to the company that he built.  According to those who work there, there is a feeling of change in the air.  An employee mentioned to me that the attention to detail on how the campus is kept clean is back and the messages of the environment are signaling that there is serious business about to happen, again.  And, without having to say much about it, employees are taking notice and upping their work attention and performance.  Where we are yes, can shape who we are.

I wonder if Adam and Eve, after they had eaten from the forbidden fruit, didn’t later in life sit and talk about the decision that they made and how things might have been different had they not focused on just the one tree.  See, they missed that the rest of the Garden of Eden was everything and all that any person could have ever wanted or dreamed of obtaining.  But, instead of saying to each other, “Hey, let’s not even think about going over there, let’s explore and hang out everywhere else”, they just had to go check out the one place that God told them to avoid.  And, who did they find when they decided to venture?  Yep, the same that any of us will find when we allow ourselves to be shaped by where we are.  Even today, there are offices, cubicles that you know you will be safer and better by not visiting.  Consider that today, we can all be, because we are human and vulnerable, become shaped by where we are. How will that change the course of today?

Reference: Genesis 3:9 (New Living Translation)