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 366: Divisions

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I have always been a lover of a good play on words. A dear friend from college once told me that 90% of my humor was just playing with the meaning of words. I think he was right. What he didn’t say that I really am not that funny. He should have. But, I digress. There is a word that I do find interesting in the work world. That is the word “Division”. When companies start to get big they begin to set up “Divisions”. They will then create a position to lead that Division. That may be the Head, General Manager or even the President of the Division. The word division has many meanings. The one that companies would desire would be; “a major autonomous or semi-independent but subordinate administrative unit of an industrial enterprise, government bureau, transportation system, or university: the sales division of our company; the Division of Humanities.” But the root of the word division is to divide. The first meaning in the dictionary for the word “division” is; “the act or process of dividing; state of being divided.” I hope you see where I am going. We chunk up our work and our companies into different states of divisions. We divide and conquer, but we divide. We don’t stay unified and with each division, big or small, we have to work harder to find unity, alignment, cohesiveness and agreement. We then end up creating jobs and functions to work on keeping the company and people on the same page. We counsel and move people out of the company who can’t work together and who are too divisive. As believers we can’t afford to get caught up in these divisions. If we are to work to our purpose and be the role models and examples, we are to be people who model the cohesiveness of God’s love. There is a peace and a calm to this that allows for us to live and work in the promise of no separation from God. We read in Romans 8:38 that nothing can separate or divide us from Him; “And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow, not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.” As we go about today and this week, look for the divisions around us and let’s see if we can’t model bringing the divisions together and be the menders of separations.

Reference: Romans 8:38 (New Living Testament)