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 728: Leave Behinds

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“Peace I leave you; my peace I give to you, not as the world gives, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled and do not be afraid.”

When we are going into a business presentation we will bring with us our presentation, which we hope covers enough to get the point across but not go into so much depth that we lose the audience. To ensure that, what we will do many times is have some “leave behinds” that the audience can intake later that may answer the questions that didn’t come up, or where there wasn’t enough time to cover in the presentation. The leave behind material may also have more statistics and data to support the argument or create confidence that what the presenter was saying can be substantiated or believed. While we call them “leave behinds”, they are actually very important documents that could make the difference on someones thinking later when no one else is around. What we always want to do with those materials is to anticipate and ensure that we think through how someone might feel after the presentation so that we can address those open questions or issues in a way that keeps them feeling as comfortable and agreeable as we wanted them to be in the actual presentation time.

Jesus gave us the ultimate “leave behind” material. Along with the opportunity for everlasting life, he left us peace and a reason for us to be confident, not troubled and not afraid about what work, life, and the world may bring. There are a lot of follow on questions in our world right now. In our businesses we don’t know what will come next; whether we will see another recession, whether the financial markets will recover, what will happen with consumer confidence, etc. We just don’t know and when we are given plans, actions, or initiatives that we are told should work, we just aren’t always quite sure. We need to have the leave behind materials to go check. In our lives, that is God’s Word and God’s promises to us. We are told by Jesus directly to not let our hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. With that kind of “leave behind”, we shouldn’t need anything else to be reassured.

Reference: John 14:27