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 834: Co-Working

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“We work together as partners who belong to God. You are God’s field, God’s building – not ours.”

Let me start by saying that I admittedly am not the greatest at co-chairing work or activities. Call it “controlling” or “selfish” or whatever, but I like to be assigned something, be held accountable for it, and then know that it succeeds or fails based not on the dependency on others, but on what I know will get done or not. But, that is not the way of the world. While yes, every business or organization has someone who ultimately makes the final call, that is only one person and all the rest of the people must work together well and balance each other in decision-making input, etc. So, my own weakness can get in the way of the organization’s overall effectiveness and it is something that I must check regularly. We should all check this because when running most effectively, organizations will have a team of people who play off of each other and by the time the final decision needs to be made there is usually more consensus than not. That is when you know a team is really co-working well together.

Paul called upon his co-workers to understand how important it is for us to partner in the work of the Kingdom. What Paul points out to us is that our co-workers in God’s work don’t belong to any of us here on earth, but instead, belong to God. A new acquaintance of mine is working on a “business book” for churches. I’ve helped her title the book, “Leading the Called”. It is different when someone feels called into God’s Kingdom work. But, let’s never lose sight that we also are doing Kingdom work each and everyday and that we as believers take our time, talents and treasures into the world each and every day. How we partner with others and how we take and follow our directions from God can have huge impact on the advancement of God’s Kingdom. Let’s not forget that God has invited us to be co-workers with Him in the field that he is preparing for the tremendous harvest to come and that today is day of His work, not just ours!

Reference: 1 Corinthians 3:9 (New Living Testament)