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 182: The Hard Truth

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I was listening recently to the story of an executive in Hollywood who early in his career would go into script meetings and when the time came for him to pass his opinion he would look at each of the scripts and call them like he saw them; many times telling others that he didn’t like one or that he didn’t think the company should support one of the scripts, etc. After one of his early days meetings he was taken aside by another studio exec who told him that was not working the way that he was expected. He asked the question, “what do you mean?”. He was then told that he was to not be as truthful as he was and that it would be better for everyone if he would just tell everyone what they wanted to hear in the meeting and that then later he could decide to not support a project in private. After he digested what he was being told, he said back, “thank you for that advice but I’m going to try it my way and see how it goes.” All of these years later, this executive has risen up the studio ladder and he is now known as the person who people who seek out for advice and counsel before the meetings, a person who others can count on to give it to them straight so they don’t waste time or money, a person who others can count on to tell the truth. We run into this all the time at work. It is hard to give people the truth when it hurts or when it runs contrary to what someone wants to hear, or when it might hurt their feelings. Yet, what we don’t recognize is that by not giving the people the truth we are actually hurting versus helping them. In 1 John 3:18 we read; “Dear children, let’s not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions.” If we want to be people who really are showing that we love one another, we can start with allowing the telling of the truth to be the most notable action of all. Today, you may be faced with a situation where providing the truth may be hard and controversial. If in that moment, you can think that the true action of love is to let the truth be told, then you will find yourself feeling more confident and courageous to allow the truth to be spoken.

Reference: 1 John 3:18 (New Living Testament)