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 548: Following Directions

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Yesterday I wrote on the importance of agreeing on a direction. Today, let’s explore the importance of just following directions. The amount of time, energy and emotion that goes into discussing, debating and fighting against just taking and following simple directions is astounding. If you are a manager of others you have at some point sat and scratched your head wondering why someone who works for you just can’t follow the simple directions given to them and worry about being fancy or something else different later. And if you work, you know the feeling of being told to do something you really don’t want to do and you want to fight it. There are many cases where we should push back and try and take things in a different direction but there are just as many times when we should just follow the directions given to us and do the job well. To build confidence from our bosses it is important that they not see us as always wanting to go cross-stream. They need to know that we can follow their current and go with them and then get the job done well and beyond their expectations. If we are constantly fighting them and pushing against their directions then it becomes much harder to exceed those expectations and when the time comes for something critical to be accomplished in a short time frame, the task won’t be given to someone who has to be convinced and talked to about why they should do the job. The assignment will go to the one who the manager knows will pick up the ball and run with it to their full ability. If we doubt that following directions can be a good thing see what Jesus prayed in John 17:4, “I brought glory to you here on earth by doing everything you told me to do.” If Jesus could humble himself to follow directions and do what He was told to do, then certainly with the work we have in front of us, we can do the same.

Reference: John 17:4 (New Living Testament)