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 230: Assistants

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My wife was the administrative assistant to the chairmen of one of the largest companies in the world. She worked for him for nearly 20 years as he rose through the ranks of the company to ultimately become CEO and Chairman. As I watched her in that position, I came to realize and appreciate the value of that role from a different perspective. Having had my own assistants over the years (some great, many good) I have always understood how valuable that person can be. But, there is more to it than just skill. What I know from my own experience, and from my wife’s job, is that there are many intangibles that can make or break the ability for two people to work together in an assistant and manager relationship. First and foremost is chemistry. If there is not good chemistry between two people, then this type of co-dependent relationship will never succeed. Second, there must be a high level of trust from both sides. The manager needs to be able to trust that he/she can turn over just about anything to an assistant and trust that what happens from then on out will be a pure reflection of the manager’s wishes, attitude, values, and desires. There also must be trust on the assistant’s side that the boss will never put her/his assistant in a position that can’t be handled or compromises the respect, dignity and confidence of that assistant. If you can get both chemistry and trust going between two people then confidence is built between the two and before long they can be completing each others’ sentences. Dynamic duos are built this way and many career-long and life-long friendships have been built from these types of working relationships. These are partnerships and extend far beyond just assistance. A great administrative assistant is a helper and who of us doesn’t want and need help in out job? We all need help on a day-to-day basis. We may not be in a position to have an administrative assistant, or we we may and we just haven’t unlocked the potential of that relationship. Regardless, we all need as much help on the job as we can get and as we try and live and work out our purpose while on our jobs, we need even a bigger amount of help to do so. God tells us that He wants to be that helper. In Psalm 146:5 we are told; “But joyful are those who have the God of Israel as their helper, whose hope is in the Lord their God.” You see, God knows that our work is hard and that we many times feel overwhelmed, pressured, stressed, up to our eyeballs, under the gun…you know the feeling. He wants to be our helper in all things, work included. He is telling us today that we can find joy in our work and our lives if we will only allow him to help. From there we can begin to put our hope in Him. Like the relationship between the best boss and assistant is when the chemistry is perfect, the trust is high and the confidence is there between the two of them, so can all of that be there for us, and multiplied many times over, if we will only let God take on the helper role that He applies for with us each and every day.

Reference: Psalm 146:5 (New Living Testament)