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 250: Quality Control

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Whatever business you are in, at some point there is a discussion about quality. This can be quality of the product or quality of the delivery of service. Quality is for many companies the number one priority. Ford Motor Company’s advertising campaign in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s was built around the theme of quality with; “Quality is Job One!”. We expect quality from products that we buy. We expect quality of service when we engage with a company for services rendered. When we receive quality workmanship or service we equate that to the price paid and if the quality is greater than the price then we feel like we have received a value. But when quality suffers everything suffers. That is why many a CEO and senior management team will go to any extreme to improve quality and ensure that it is one area that they can rest upon firmly. It is very interesting how the consultants who work in the quality area discuss the issue. As they dissect the problem many times what they find is that it is not a major breakdown in process, commitment, or orientation, but rather somewhere in the manufacturing process or in the service delivery standards there is a minor infraction that pollutes the entire process and renders it impossible to have perfection. Many hours and many consulting dollars are spent annually in the search for the tiniest of issues to be identified and rectified. Our lives are much the same. Especially at work. It’s a small proportion of the population that have huge gaping holes in their character or their personality. But there are many, myself included, who have many small areas in our lives that need to be changed, improved, or removed in order to be the type of person we want to be. These small infractions and imperfections can be the ones that ruin the whole batch of our being. Our job, as believers, is like the quality control inspectors, to continuously be identifying areas for improvement and then change the standard operating procedures to ensure that these areas are mitigated. This is what God asks us to do in 1 Thessalonians 4:7; “God has called us to live holy lives, not impure lives.” God calls us to inspect for the imperfections and then do whatever we have to do to remove those impurities. Today as you think about how you work and live, are there impurities in your life that you just keep bringing to work every day? Is it a choice of language that you use at work, is it how you treat others around you, is it the feelings that you have towards others or your attitude in general that is getting in the way of your personal quality improvement? Is there one thing you could begin changing today that when you did your own quality of person assessment, you would say needs to change? Today would be the day to make that change. Like the garment tags we get with new clothing, what better piece of paper to have in our pocket today than, “This child of God was inspected and approved by the Holy Spirit” That is true quality control.

Reference: 1 Thessalonians 4:7 (New Living Testament)