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 192: The Upside Down Pyramid

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Back in the early 1990’s there was a lot of talk about how companies that really understood their employees would be thinking differently about the organization charts of their companies What they would do is invert the traditional organizational pyramid with the CEO upside down so that the front-line employee would be at the top of the pyramid, not the bottom. It was a visual way of trying to show that they wanted the front-line employee to feel like they were all there for them. Companies started renaming their headquarters into “service centers” or “support centers” with the idea that the senior executives and the people in headquarters were there to serve and support everyone else. Those ideas hung around for awhile but now we hear less about them. The principle was right though. If you are manager, you are there to support and serve the needs of those who work for you, not the other way around. Those who think that they are the boss to have others serve them find out sooner or later that they aren’t very good bosses. Servant leadership is about knowing who is really doing the work and being there for them. There is no better example that the leader who served others first than our Lord. We read in Mark; “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.” The thought for today as you go to work is how are you serving others? Are you looking at the needs of the people on your team and in your organization and trying to figure out how you can best provide service to them? Or, are you waiting for others to serve you? I think we all know the right answer. See if you can’t turn the pyramid upside down today and take a different vantage point and become the leader or team member who serves others. You may find that it is a much better view from that vantage point.

Reference: Mark 10:45 (New Living Testament)