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 3K166: On Mission

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“Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth.”

Few things about a business give me more confidence than when I see an organization that has a vision and mission that drives and aligns the entire company from top to bottom and steers direction and decision making.  It’s really so simple, but so hard to establish and follow that many companies just never get to it and then wonder why they seem to flail and lose direction as the market changes and people come and go. In order to truly be mission driven there must be a deep-seated belief in the mission and then the unwavering discipline to stick with it and keep it alive.  I’ve seen way too many companies who write a mission statement, hang it on a wall and then go about doing business as if the statement never existed.  That is almost worse than never having put together a mission at all. Not following what we say we are going to follow creates cynicism and distrust.  Both are culture poisons and company killers.  What are you doing to be mission driven in your company, function, department or team?

Purposed worKING is about each of us fulfilling a mission of bringing glory to God through what we have been given as our earthly work. Each day as we approach the Office/Screen or sit down for that first time in front of the keyboard, are we thinking about this and aligning our words, actions and thoughts in a mission-driven way?  In the church world groups of people come together and then go and do “mission work” in a far off place or in a part of their community that is under served.  Let’s take today and start from the inside out with some of our own mission work and be sure that our hearts, mind and soul are truly mission driven.

Reference: Ephesians 4:14 (New Living Translation)