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 817: Mental Assent

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“For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved.”

Trying to get people to move from compliance to real commitment is a constant challenge for any business or organization. We do the best we can to describe what is most important to us, paint a vision of the future, and then hire the people we think have the most passion and commitment. But, even when we think we have it all right, we get it wrong somewhere along the way and we end up spending a whole bunch of time re-convincing someone, or worse yet, having to deal with a people problem. What we want to move people from is working solely with their heads and hands to adding working with their hearts. To make this happen, we must reach and touch them where they are, deep in their values and principles. If we can align there then we have the best chance of having someone truly commit to the business and task at hand. These means starting with knowing what we truly believe about the business and then communicating that to others in way that they identify and believe for themselves.

This past week in the Sunday School class I teach, the title of the lesson was “Heart Faith or Mental Assent”. As I taught the children about the difference, I realized that all of us could use the lesson to be repeated to us. It’s not enough to just say we believe and then let our actions say the opposite. When this happens it brings to question from those around us about what is real and what is not? So often it is easy to just mentally agree with something but never let it take root within us so that it affects our actions. It is in our actions that our belief can be seen and where our faith is grounded. It’s a great question for each of us today…where are we mentally assenting and where are we truly believing?

Reference: Romans 10:10 (New Living Testament)