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 1022: T.H.I.N.K. – Part Four: Necessary

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 “In fact, some parts of the body that seem weakest and least important are actually the most necessary.”

The past weeks were filled with news about what happens when an email or communication is discovered that turns out to reveal actions and behaviors that are deceptive, dishonest and unseemly. It’s worth taking a few Purposed worKING posts to remind ourselves of how we should conduct ourselves with electronic communication.  There are no secrets in the digital age and so we must T.H.I.N.K. before we act, write or speak.

When we communicate, we need to pull these communications through the filter of “necessary”.  There are plenty of examples where no communication at all would have been better than the communication that was released. I am always concerned about communication that ends up being restated, revised or worse yet, pulled back.  In our age of being fast and quick to the punch we can end up overreacting or communicating with emotions versus logic and facts.  Companies that feel like they must push and push out communication just to do so also run the risk of when it is time to communicate something important and needed to be read, that the audience/readers are already desensitized and never even open up the communication.  Don’t get me wrong, lack of communication leaves people open to making up their own stories.  That said, being sure that there is a definition of what is necessary is a very good practice.

So many times we would be better off to just sit on our hands and not send something that really isn’t necessary.  I think about the “entertaining” things that run around the internet and have to be remembered that anything we send can be misinterpreted by someone else and our reputation becomes associated with that communication.  If we are to be strong in our witness and in our example, then let’s be sure that when we do communicate, that we have impact because what comes from us us always thought of as being necessary.

Reference: 1 Corinthians 12:22 (New Living Translation)