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 140: Watchmen

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“Watchmen”, the movie, just came out. It is based on the popular graphic novel of the same name. Like the themes of many comic books and superhero movies you have a group of people with special powers who because of their past experiences and influences use these powers for good and the protection of society from evil. Or sometimes they get all tangled up in themselves and they end up on the side of evil versus good. The reason that this theme is so powerful and works over and over is that we all have something in our past that we would like to overcome or some experience that has shaped how we think of helping others and we want to fantasize every now and then that we have our own special powers that we could use for the good of others with an alterego that could live out the hero’s life. To me this is how we are at work a lot of times. We come to work with our capes and shields on and try and be the superhero who can save the day against the “evil competition” or “forces” that are working against our company’s collective good. And the halls of the workplace are filled with egos and superegos dashing, flying, teleporting themselves across the globe to conquer. It’s a funny image if you imagine a set of superheroes and you put the heads and faces of those you work with on the bodies and costumes of the superheroes and place them around the Board Room table. There is an element of the superhero mentality that God does want us to take to work with us. He wants us to be the “watchmen” of our time. In Isaiah 62:6 he tells us the type of watchmen we are to be when Isaiah prays for Jerusalem: “O Jerusalem, I have posted watchmen on your walls; they will pray to the Lord day and night for the fulfillment of his promises. Take no rest, all you who pray”. Watchmen on the walls was the way of protecting a city and throughout history we have many examples of the watchmen who walk the walls to protect those inside. Isaiah pulls on this metaphor to find the watchmen who through their prayer and relationship with God provide protection over the people of Israel. These “watchmen” were true superheroes. Is God not asking us to be the “watchmen” of our day and to walk the walls over our workplaces and be the ones who through our prayers, our everyday life example and our striving to live out our purpose in our work, be the watchmen over the other believers within our workplaces? We all have a little superhero in us and shouldn’t we be bringing whatever those special powers and talents to work with us to do His super work?

Reference: Isaiah 62:6 (New Living Testament)