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 821: Arguing For Truth

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“For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth.”

I’ve been doing some work with a very successful company who’s corporate culture is based on finding, knowing, speaking and operating to the truth. I’ve introduced a number of people to the company and after meeting and learning about the culture they can’t help but compare their own corporate culture to what they have just seen. Usually it is not a favorable comparison. Many cultures do the opposite of looking for the truth. Instead, they don’t want to have tough conversations, or ask hard questions, or call someone on their opinion because they don’t want to hurt their feelings, or the discussions can never get beyond judgement or evaluation. But, defining truth and then working towards that definition can yield amazing findings and results.

John Stott, who recently died, was the rector of All Souls Church in London from 1921 until last year. He was a prolific writer and had much to say about truth and what we can do to argue for the truth of Jesus by being practical and smart in our persuasion. In Christianity Today he wrote; “I’ll give you one quick example. You cannot force people to go to church by legislation. You can’t force them to rest on Sundays. Nor can we simply quote from the Bible as if that settles the matter. But we can put forward our best arguments. We can argue that psychologically and physically, human beings need one day’s rest in seven, and that is it socially good for families who are separated during the week to have a day together on Sunday. We can argue for legislation that protects workers from being compelled to work and encourages family life. In this example, we’re neither imposing our Christian views, nor quoting the Bible dogmatically. We are simply using every argument – physical, psychological, sociological -in order to commend the wisdom and truth of biblical teaching. Why? Because we believe in the power of truth.”

Reverend Stott’s good words fit for our Purposed worKING. Let’s not miss the opportunity to argue for the truth.

Reference: 2 Corinthians 13:8