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 892: Facing Up, Part 3

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“I tell you the truth, when you were young; you were able to do as you liked”

Next Monday will be different at Facebook.  Mark Zuckerberg and his team will have a whole new constituency to satisfy.  It’s not that they are not used to satisfying a billion people each day, but in their new world, they won’t be trying to make people happy who use their product for the fun of it, but instead they will be trying to make people happy who have invested and expect a return on their money. That is a whole different set of people to care, communicate and keep delighted.  The roller coaster of emotions that goes through an executive of a public company when the shareholders start to speak up is interesting.  Shareholders are a necessary thing, unless you don’t need their capital or you don’t need to provide liquidity to original investors and employees.  But, when a company goes public, the team and the Board now have to take into consideration what a large group of unrelated people are thinking.  At the end of the day, they don’t have much power as they mainly vote with their buys and sells but they can make a lot of noise and cause a lot of discomfort.  No matter our business or organization, there are people who feel more greatly invested in the company or cause and we have to take them into greater consideration as we go about our business of communicating and making decisions that affect them.

It’s so easy in our everyday work lives to blow past and miss those who are working with us.  What we don’t realize, or take the time to evaluate, is how invested they feel in a project or a task.  If we are less invested than them then we run the risk of downplaying or ignoring their needs and desires.  This is part of growing up and maturing in our work.  The greater risk for us as believers is that if we don’t pay attention to others and be sensitive to them then our insensitivity can dilute our witness.  Think about it today as we think about growing up and facing up to where God wants us to grow and develop as workers for His Kingdom.

Reference: John 21:18 (New Living Testament)