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 3K180: To What Conclusion?

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“Be still, and know that I am God!”

Maybe it is just me but it seems like we are now in a world where we like to jump to conclusions before we really know the outcome or the full story.  Possibly it is the 24-hour news cycles or the condensing down what is supposed to be full thoughts into a limited number of characters, or the need to get out a status post before someone else, or maybe it is the attention deficit that seems built more and more into our culture, but we are continually moving into a time of quick judgements, speaking before we think, and writing before we have the facts.  As such, we need to be on even a greater watch on the reflection and reputations of our companies and their products and services.  We can see in the news daily how an executive or a company gets themselves twisted from partial information being communicated or someone with less than half the truth trying to grab a soundbite.  It would be naive to think that we are ever going to slow back down and more than naive to think that we will stop partial thinking.  What we can do though is work really hard to ensure that we are telling complete stories about our businesses and not falling into the trap of allowing others to define us.  The Marketing and/or PR team/leader who can keep the company ahead of the conclusions that will inevitably be jumped towards, are worth their weight in gold.

“Be still and know that I am God”.  What a clear, forceful and at the same time, promising sentence. The Psalmist gave us this to make sure that we are listening to God in the stillness that He speaks to us.  I can also though hear in these words for our current culture that we are to be still and know who is God.  It is so easy to be quick with our words of judgment and cynicism.  Maybe what God is telling us it to “cut it out” and be still and let Him be God, not us who try and lord ourselves over others with our opinions and strong points of view.  Maybe we are not to be publishing to the world what our critiques and criticisms are about others.  Instagram, Tik Tok, Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Glassdoor, etc. are all great, but let’s consider what is constructive, what is damaging, and what is just a jump to the conclusion that hurts more than helps.

Reference: Psalm 46:10 (New Living Translation)