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 35: Accusations

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Yesterday, I wrote about taking credit and boasting where neither is warranted. It is a part of being dishonest at work. There is another dishonesty that happens at work and that is when things aren’t going so well. This is when there is blame to pass around for something that went wrong like when the customer is upset, a report was incorrect, a sale fell through, a person quits because he/she was upset with how they were treated, a part fails, or a presentation wasn’t ready in time. You know the drill. The boss or person of authority comes looking for rear ends to kick and chew. And we all know certain people who no matter the problem, they will not stand up and take accountability for themselves and instead will pass it off on someone else. They look like Teflon on the surface but inside they are being dishonest and falsely accusing others for blame when they should be standing up and taking it themselves. This is almost such a common decency and baseline treating of others that it doesn’t need a Biblical reference to convince the point, but the reference is there when Luke in Chapter 3 of the same named book, describes what it was that John the Baptist came to preach as he was preparing the way for Jesus. In verse 14 of Chapter 3, John the Baptist responds to a group of soldiers who were asking how they should live their lives. He said to them to be sure that they were fair financially and not extort others and also “don’t accuse people of things you know they didn’t do”. In that time, if a soldier was to falsely accuse someone of something they didn’t do it could lead to death. Fortunately, in our country that doesn’t happen at work, but there can certainly be a deathly emotional outcome each time someone is falsely accused at work. It doesn’t take but a few times to have the false blame come your way that you don’t want to be at that job any longer and you feel “run out”. For that reason alone, we all need to choose our words carefully and be very, very sure before we pass along any blame on anyone so we not take the chance that we are falsely accusing. Better yet, it is better to stand up and take a part of the blame and instead of allowing the witch hunt to continue, change the conversation to how we ensure it never happens again, before someone else gets dragged in rightly or wrongly. When we are willing stand tall for our actions and results, we stand along with the example of one who was willing to give His all when He was wrongly accused.

Reference: Luke 3:14 (New Living Testament)