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 400: Understanding Understanding

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To understand something, you have to work at it. Sure, sometimes it comes easy and we will understand immediately, but in other cases to really understand all that there is, we have to dig to comprehend the whole subject and most importantly, the downstream ramifications of what may or may not happen from what is in front of us. I am amazed with people who can grasp something quickly and then apply that new found understanding to what they have in front of them now and for the future. To really understand a topic, a problem, a challenge or an issue, I think it takes the ability to look at something like you are looking through a prism. What goes in as white light ends up on the wall as many different colors. This is why to understand fully we have to be willing to take the time, energy and effort to listen intently, not judge on face value and to be self-aware that our own filters don’t impeded or taint what is really going on. It feels like that we get this opportunity all day long, every day at our jobs. I am working on a project right now that is requiring the filtering of lots of different people’s points of view to get to the heart of the matter, or to get to true understanding of the issues and the challenge. A casual observation would certainly yield a different result than what comes from digging in and giving extra time and attention. We should always seek to find the true understanding in whatever we do as usually much more depends on it than appears, like people’s feelings, fragile egos, ulterior motives, etc. There is another reason to try and understand understanding. We read this in Proverbs; “Joyful is the person who finds wisdom, the one who gains understanding.” Having true understanding answers many things for us and when we have answers we find a peace and within that peace can then flow joy. It’s hard to be joyful at times of consternation or turmoil. Today, if you are staring down a problem or challenge then do the extra work necessary to gain full understanding. Once you are there, it can only be much, much better than it is now.

Reference: Proverbs 3:13 (New Living Testament)