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 391: Amen Not No-Men

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Yesterday as I was teaching Sunday School one of the little kids said that the opposite of “Amen” was “No-Men”. I laughed as you really never know what is going to come out of the mouths of babes. Later as I was thinking about it, I thought he was actually right and indeed Amen is a word of encouragement and reinforcement and the other side of it would be being negative, so in a way, “Nomen” is not good. At work we are offered so many opportunities to reinforce things positively with an encouraging word, but we don’t pounce on those chances enough and more often than not someone else will jump in with the negative point of view before we have a chance to say something good, and then it is too late. Once the moment slips away it is hard to get it back and instead of placing an encouraging word we, by default and silence, will have maybe sent the opposite message of what we desired. Without even knowing it, we can become “no-men”. This is not what Paul tells us to do in Romans 15:2. He says instead, “We should please others. If we do what helps them, we will build them up in the Lord”. If we start today with a few of our own “amens” to the work and efforts of others then that pleasing will come back many folds over as will a draw from others who will want to be around us so that they can also feel the positive reinforcement. And whatever we do let’s not fall into the trap of being seen and known as the negative person in the room. No one likes or wants to follow “No-men”.

Reference: Romans 15:2 (New Living Testament)