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 368: Listen and Learn

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The first time I heard of an executive going on a “listen and learn tour” was back in the early 1990’s when an incoming CEO was assigned to me to help build his orientation plan. He wanted to visit as many manufacturing plants, sales offices, logistics centers and functional areas of the company as he could before he took over the reins. I remember him saying to me, just tell the people that I will be there to “listen and learn”. Since that time, I have always encouraged new employees to take the same approach and listen and learn for as long as they can before they begin to “talk and teach”. In my experience, listening and learning first is a sure-fire success formula. If entering a new business or job and trying to prove that you know it all from day one, you are setting yourself up for serious organ rejection. But, listening shows you care and taking in what you learn and doing something with it shows that you can be a real learner and are open to new ideas, thoughts and ways of doing things. The term listen and learn was positively refreshed in my mind this past weekend when our Pastor spoke from John 6:45 when Jesus said, “As it is written in the Scriptures, ‘They will all be taught by God’. Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from Him comes to Me.” Listen and learn; there it is as a way of living taught to us by Jesus. Today, think about how much listening and learning you are doing versus talking and teaching. Even if you have been in the same job for 20 years and you are the boss, there is still an opportunity to listen to employees you normally would not sit and talk to, or go out and listen to customers and learn what they have to say. We all can heed the lesson and listen and learn more than we did yesterday and more tomorrow than we will do today.

Reference: John 6:45 (New Living Testament)