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 691: Stickiness of Friends

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:There are “friends” who destroy each other, but a real friend sticks closer than a brother.”

The technology world is awash in a new social network; Google+. I’m not really sure how many more social networks I need, but I have accepted my invitation to Google+ and I can see some advantages to the Circles and Streams. It is also interesting in that in this new social network I can now categorize my friends more so than in the past. The definition of friends continues to evolve and I can see that more and more of business will revolve around the concept of friendship. Friends are sticky. That means that if we can get friends involved or interested in the same things, then they are more likely to stick with something together. If we trust our friends more than others, then it makes sense that we would tap into those same people for recommendations, supports, guidance, etc. But, this demands an even further deepening and stratification of the definition of friend. I’m not sure who can truly define who is a friend or not better than each one of us individually, but it is certainly something for us to watch in our businesses, because if we can get our customers to tap into their friends for us, then we can see a new set of customers emerge.

In our personal, work, and spiritual lives, God calls on us to define our friends to an even deeper level. We are not to be the type of friends who would tear each other down through competition, envy or coveting. We as Solomon says, are to know that “a real friend sticks closer than a brother”. That means, never turning way and always being there for each other. Sure, brothers may argue and not always see eye-to-eye, but they are always to come back to each other and be there when needed. We call ourselves brothers and sisters in Christ. We need to be sure that we are living up to that label and standard that comes with the definition set by Solomon. Today, let’s think about our friends and check whether or not we are sticking with them.

Reference: Proverbs 18:24 (New Living Testament)