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 652: Instruction Manuals and Handbooks

purposed worKING 1 Comment

“All scripture is given by the inspiration of God.”

I was recently in a Best Buy where I overhead a customer telling a salesperson that he had just bought a TV and he couldn’t find the owner’s manual in the box and wanted to see if he could get a copy from the store. The salesperson told him that the TV manufacturer no longer prints manuals and that he could go online and pull down what he needed. The customers was caught a little off-guard and then reluctantly said, “okay” and moved on. The following week I was working with an Executive from a good sized private company and he showed me their employee handbook and was asking my advice on how best to update and disseminate policy changes. I found myself giving the same type of answer as the Best Buy salesperson in that it was time for this company to get everything online and then just push out the changes that occur instead of taking on the cost and headaches of printing something that is out of date the day it comes off the printer. We each need to get more and more comfortable with what it means to obtain knowledge from a screen. As you read this, that is exactly what you are doing. And to this, if we know that our customers, clients, employees, etc. are moving quickly to everything being online then we need to get better and better at the communication that we can create for online consumption. Some say that blogs are dying or already dead. The same is being said about websites. So, it is up to us to figure that out and stay ahead of the curve so we don’t fall behind. Better to know than not know in today’s day and age.

Regardless of whether it is online or written on parchment paper, God has given us the ultimate Instruction Manual and Handbook for work and life. 66 different books, written by forty different men all inspired by the same and one God, written over a span of 1600 years and holding up today as well as it did at the time of its’ writing. Like the person who decides to jump into a project before reading the directions or the instruction manual, we can end up going into our work and our lives without direction if we don’t spend time in God’s Word. There is no guarantee that any of us will put together our lives in the best way, but with God’s instruction manual don’t you think that it can be much better than guessing and trying to go it alone? Have you taken the time today to check in and see what instructions there might be for you today?

Reference: 2 Timothy 3:16 (New Living Testament)