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 1127: Grading Success

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“…For God has said, “I will never fail you. I will never abandon you.”

I got to listen recently to a professor of Statistics who was telling us about how with her teaching methods that bring statistics out of a book and into examples of everyday life encounters, that she has significantly improved the number of “DWFs”.  It took a few minutes but finally someone asked what was on my mind and I am sure the minds of others, “What is a DWF?”  The teacher explained that this meant; drops (those who drop out within the allowed try it out weeks); withdrawals, (which are those who stay past that time limit but still pull out of the class), and; failures,( those that stick with it but fail the class).  “DWFs”….none are good.  But, the good news is that by using technology for new teaching delivery methods, illustrative examples and pragmatic communication she was taking a hard subject and making it easier to learn. I wonder how often we have DWFs from our customers?  Do we even know how many DWFs happen when someone experiences our product or service?  What is for sure is that when any one of the three happen, they tell others so we can’t afford to ignore or miss this important part of the grading of our own success.  Miss it and lose.  Know and improve it, and win.

Stop here and thank our Lord that He does not grade us. If He did we all would be F’s for sure.  But, even in His merciful and forgiving Kingdom we still have D’s and W’s.  And, we all have shown signs and tendencies of this as well.  Peter denied Christ three times at the most significant time of need in Jesus’ life.  He withdrew from Jesus and let others know it. When grading ourselves it is hard to comprehend how we can miss God’s love and gifts that He has for us, but we do.  God wants us to stay in the game with Him. Don’t drop or withdraw and don’t worry about failing.  His is the greatest of understanding and patience.  Today, where are we?  On the verge of a DWF?  Nothing that can happen today will undermine of destroy God’s will, love and protection of us.  If we can remember this today then DWF has no meaning at all to us.
Reference: Hebrews 13:6 (New Living Translation)