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 465: In The End, It All Adds Up

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This past weekend the news was released that the CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Mark Hurd, was stepping down over violations of HP’s policies. The stories that were released had his termination basically coming down to the falsification of expense reports totaling up to $20,000. Whether it is $1 or $20,0000 it is still bad and wrong, but the fact that one of the most recently successful technology CEO’s who earns in the tens of millions of dollars per year, would allow himself to risk his job and reputation over, in comparison with his salary, that relatively small amount of money, reminded me of how important it is that we each not overlook the impact that the small things can have on so much. In Luke Chapter 16, Jesus says; “Unless you are faithful in small matters, you won’t be faithful in large ones. If you cheat even a little, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities.” In the end, Jesus is saying, it all adds up. The small things matter and can become the difference in someone trusting, or not trusting us with the bigger responsibilities. And, we all have small areas in our work where we can either decide to cut the corner or not. It is something to weigh heavily. As believers who are trying to bring glory to God as the purpose of our work, it goes beyond just the faithfulness of the small matters. Jesus goes on to say in verse 11; “And if you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven?” What we do at work and how we conduct ourselves can have tremendous impact on others and how they either respect and believe in us and what we stand for. Think about this today as the small things come your way and remember that that one small infraction ca end up becoming a huge deal.

Reference: Luke 16: 9-11 (New Living Testament)