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 470: CrowdSourcing

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Every since the book, “Wisdom of the Crowds” was written, there has been a steady push to try and “crowd source” everything. Technology allows for us to put a problem, a product, a service, an idea, or a concept, in front of large samples of people who have a common interest and then see what they come up with, as a crowd. Sounds a little like democracy that actually works. There are many good things that come from the wisdom of crowds, but the crowd does not make the decision on a product or a service, it still comes down to people who have a point of view and take a stand. The crowds can provide a direction, but a person must make the decision. I see it all the time in the workplace where consensus falls short and someone has to step forward, but for one reason or another, no one wants to do so. It takes a person with conviction and belief to take a stand. It takes even more than that to run counter to the crowd and refute the “wisdom”. When we were growing up, I am sure each of us heard from our parents, “well, would you jump off a bridge just because everyone else was doing it?” The sad part is that too many people do proverbially follow others off the bridge, just because it is harder to take the stand against the crowd. I am reminded of this when I read the account of what the crowd did once after Jesus had cast out demons in a place called Gadarenes. After he had performed His miracle, we read in Matthew 8:24; “The entire town came out to meet Jesus, but they begged him to go away and leave them alone.” Think about this. The “entire” town means everyone. Was there not at least one person who wanted to run counter to the crowd and spend more time and hear what Jesus had to say? I suspect there was and there was probably more than one, but instead of fighting the crowd, they succumbed and fell into the lack of wisdom of this crowd. Today, are you in or out of the crowd on some issue, problem, challenge? Are you going to stand firm with your own point of view or run the risk of missing out on something extraordinary because the crowd has a different perspective? Each of us have our own crowd to deal with and it is up to us to go with them or go against them; to be “crowded” or not.

Reference: Matthew 8:34 (New Living Testament)