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 810: High Five

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“Think of ways to encourage one another to outbursts of love and good deeds.”

In the business world when we have a success it just doesn’t seem appropriate to do the up in the air hip or chest bumps. (I don’t think they have a name, so let’s call them “Air Bumps”). Nor do we do celebratory end-zone dances. About the best we get is a high five, a hug, a slap on the back, or maybe a fist bump. But, we want to, and we need to have a way to celebrate our successes and let the excitement out. Even just a little bit of encouragement can go a long way. I was running on Saturday and about 7 miles into my 9.5 mile run I ran by a gentleman at least 25 years my senior. As I was approaching him he held out his hand to give me a high five as I passed him. I responded with a gentle tap and a “Thank you”. He turned it around and said, “Go get ’em”. I was encouraged and I found a burst of energy from that small gesture. We all need it and in business we need it often. Consider when the last time was you gave a high five to someone on the team?

In Hebrews we are challenged to encourage our brothers and sisters in the Lord to bring forward “outbursts of love and good deeds”. This verse is so good because it reminds us how hard it is to stay in the zone of encouragement and focus on love and our good deeds. We need others around us who can keep us propped up and recognizing the things that we are doing and vice-verse. We can also encourage those around us as we see them doing those things that are upright in the Lord. Let’s today work on where our high-fives can be best put to use and see if we can’t make a difference in how we encourage others. I suspect that the better we get at this the more we might see those high fives coming back our way too.

Reference: Hebrews 10:24 (New Living Testament)