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 717: Instructions

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“Those who listen to instruction will prosper; those who trust the Lord will be joyful.”

If we could stop and count the hours in a day, a week, a month, or a year that we spend giving and then repeating instructions, it would be an enormous number of time. It doesn’t feel like that much daily because we break it down into little segments, like, “We need to finish this report by Tuesday and after we review it , it needs to be sent out to Jim, Mary and Larry by Wednesday morning.”, and then we move on to the next task. When the report gets done, gets reviewed and then only gets sent to Jim and Mary, but not Larry, we have to go back and review why not, and then repeat the instructions again to get it sent to Larry ASAP, with an explanation (and apology) why he was not included the first time. What happened that Larry got missed? Who knows. Maybe it wasn’t said clearly enough, maybe someone didn’t write down the instructions when receiving them, maybe someone just forgot, or maybe someone didn’t want to follow the instructions and ignored the request. We usually never know, but what we do know is that time, energy, emotions and social capital gets burned up in trying to redo what should have been done the first time. What we can learn in business is that taking the extra time to ensure that the instructions are heard and understood, even if that means writing them down for someone else, is time well spent. A missed instruction can create a bonfire that can burn out of control for a long time.

In Proverbs, when Solomon tells us that we can prosper by following instructions, he is assuredly telling us that about God’s instructions, but he is also giving us a good life lesson on attitude and approach. If we become one who follows instructions then we will also become one who others can count on and feel comfortable that when given a task, the task will be done to the specificity of the instructions given. Think about someone who you work with who you wish was more that way. Then, imagine that someone else, your boss or a co-worker, might be thinking that way about you. We live and work in a world where we all want the greatest freedom to create, innovate, and experiment, but regardless of that, we still have to learn to follow our instructions. Today, God may have instructions for us that we need to follow. He may also be saying to us that we need to swallow our egos and get rid of our pride and be willing to graciously follow the instructions which we are given.

Reference: Proverbs 16:20 (New Living Testament)