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 1014: #’s

“…Be an example to all believers in what you say, in the way you live, in your love, your faith, and your purity.”

We were watching TV the other night and while in the middle of the show up on the screen comes a random watermark set of words with a # in front of them.  It was so blatant and obvious that it was kinda obnoxious.  The Producers were trying to create a meme on Twitter, but in my estimation, didn’t do so well or elegantly.  Everyone wants to # something these days.  Put a # in front if it and let’s see if we can make it popular. But, there is the other side that we need to watch too.  That is the what our consumer and customers might # about us. If you are in the airline industry you know how important this can be and they are a good industry for the rest of us to learn from and about. One set of seats that come unbolted and there will be hundreds of #’s created to then be managed against. We might not have this level of problem, but even a handful of people can create lots of noise. So, let’s watch the # and be ready to proactively and defensively create and respond.

I have been thinking recently about what would be the words that I would # to describe my example to others? In an earlier time we would have just said what is our, example, description, reputation, brand, elevator pitch, etc. So, its the same with the #.  What is it that we would want to have #’d about us? What I would like to add to the question too is are we ready for the immediacy of what the # could be created?  What I mean by that is that with each word, action and behavior we are creating a # and others are also creating them about us right now.  The power of the # is one for us to think about today.  Right now, ask yourself, what are the 2-3 #’s that would summarize a week well-worked for the Kingdom? Write them down and then at the end of this week go back and take a look to see if they would still hold up on Friday like they did today?

Reference: 1 Timothy 4:12 (New Living Translation)