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 693: Weeding Out

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“Let both grow together until the harvest. Then I will tell the harvesters to sort out the weeds and burn them and to put the wheat in the barn.”

In business we are always working to separate the good versus not as good performers. The number of hours that go into trying to figure out the best way to evaluate the performance of someone and then to go about that performance management process is more than anyone ever expects. But, performance management is important so that we can ensure that we are getting the best performance from individuals that collectively turns into overall improved performance of the company. Organizations that just take a punt on this and don’t try and manage performance are not helping themselves. So, we have to separate the wheat from the weeds and ensure that we are feeding and harvesting the wheat and getting rid of the weeds. But, it doesn’t happen overnight and there is a time when we have to be able to let the two work next to each other and still retain and motivate the best people. That’s an art and what we can call “good management”. If we aren’t thinking about this today, or almost all of the time, then we are not doing our jobs and we could be letting the best performers get choked out.

Jesus gave us the parable of the Wheat and Weeds. He was telling us that we are going to have to, in this world, grow among all kinds of people and things that can happen to us and that he expects for us to be the wheat and to be there, ready for harvest. Until then, we cannot get discouraged, confused or compromised as we live and work among the weeds. Together we grow, until our day of harvest. If we can realize that God is good and that with even all the things in this world than can try and drag us down or break us, God gives us all that we need to grow strong and tall among it all, so that we are ready on harvest day. Today, don’t despair over all the weeds around us, instead, rejoice in the promise of God for what will come.

Reference: Matthew 13:30 (New Living Testament)