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 316: “It Was Just Bad Judgment”

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Before we even get to work each day we are bombarded with messages and news of people using or having bad judgment. Whether it a celebrity, a politician, a high-profile business executive, a sports figure, or someone we know, we are confronted with examining instances of others’ judgment each and every day. I once had a situation in my career where a senior executive had just received a gift and decided to bring it to work to show his staff and in particular his personal assistant. As he unwrapped the gift and brought it up in front of her, she saw it and ran from the office. Her next stop, after sitting at her desk trying to figure out what to do next, was my office. This senior executive had just showed her a new pistol that he had received. As we talked to this senior executive about why he had brought the gun to work, he didn’t think anything of it at all. We had rules in our business that weapons and guns were not allowed in the workplace, but for him, he couldn’t see the difference between a gun and the golf putter that another executive kept in his office. It was a case of very bad judgment. Even without our no-tolerance policy, he would have still lost his job for the use of bad judgment. Like I said, we hear of these things everyday as in the case now of the NBA player who brought a gun to the locker room (or in his case, to his office). We are confronted by big judgment lapses and smaller indiscretions that are also the by-product of poor and bad judgment. When we process these through our own experience and try to do our best to not lapse into using bad judgment ourselves, we need to take each and every lesson and ensure that we are not allowing ourselves to miss or not see what is right and pure. I know only one way to do this and always be sure. That is to stay in God’s word and to not lose the lessons and words that He gives us. We can read this in Proverbs 4:5; “Get wisdom; develop good judgment. Don’t forget my words or turn away from them.” Being in God’s Word daily, studying and remembering what we read, is the anchor of good judgment that we can have that will keep us steady and in the right place when everything else around us is blowing and moving around. Good judgment is a great example to others and the example that God wants us to have as work towards His purpose.

Proverbs 4:5 (New Living Testament)