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 310: Starting At The Bottom

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I was talking to a college graduate from last year who just found a job. As he described the job to me, he was very humble and grateful that he had any job to begin with. He told me that the job he had taken required him to start at the bottom and work his way up. I explained to him that this was fine and that most of us, myself included, did just the same thing. Not enough stories are told about those who started in the mail room and ended up in the corner office. That’s mainly because most of us don’t stay in one company long enough to see that full ascension cycle occur. But even when we change jobs, we know that we need to start at the bottom and work our way up. That may mean that we need to start at the bottom of the organization and the root of the work and learn the business from the ground floor, all done before we can be truly effective in our new role. Those that come in from the outside and act as if they know and understand the business before they really do, don’t last long. This is a challenge for all of us, to work as though we don’t know everything and continue to return to the foundations of our business and to the people who do the real work and value their work and the relationships we can have with them. Just a few day after Christmas we should be reminded that Jesus took the same approach. He came to the earth and started at the bottom of the bottom, as a baby, born in a manger in a stable and from there worked at his life like God desired to rise to be the King of Kings. We so often think that life and success should come easy and that we have “earned it already”. Any time we start to fall into that attitude and we forget that life and success at work is really about what we do to work from the bottom up, then all we need to do is think about how our Lord started into this world and how He, without regret or disappointment, worked, learned and waited until it was time for God to bring about His purposes. As we enter into the last days before the New Year, let’s not forget the example that Jesus provided for us and let us never forget from where we have come and how important it is to never lose sight of importance of starting at the bottom.

Reference: Luke Chapter 2 (New Living Testament)