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 33: Produced Fruit

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When we hire someone into a job we are basically crossing our fingers and hoping that the interview and assessment process works and that the person will be all that we want him/her to be. And, there is no day more so than someone’s first day when they will receive the highest regard and have the highest potential and expectations place on them. From day two on it will all be about the results they achieve and how they achieve those results. That is the way we are all evaluated at work. Someone got it mixed up when they thought that work was about having a place to go and do the least to be done to get by without regard to how others feel about how we do our job, get a paycheck and go home content and assured that the job will be there tomorrow and the next day. If there ever were those days, they are long gone. Today, we live in a performance-based work world where the expectations on us are raised each day. So, what you did yesterday is not good enough for tomorrow. This doesn’t have to be a negative. In fact, this is all within our control. Jesus gave us the parable in Matthew and its fruit. He was speaking of how we are to beware of false prophets and those who say they believe but don’t act or live so. He goes onto talk about how a tree that doesn’t produce fruit is chopped down and thrown into the fire. Yes, it is a reach to take this parable and bring it into the workplace, but part of our everyday way we live is how we live in our work and what we produce is under scrutiny in both the earthly and spiritual realms. The point here is that we have a choice in what kind of tree we want to be. We can choose to be a tree that produces fruit and results or we can choose to not be, and take the consequences. The fruit is not only “what” but also “how”. And, so much of our spiritual journey on earth has to do with how we treat others and live our lives. It is the how as much as it is the what. Jesus says in Matthew 7:20 says that we can be identified by what it is we produce; “Yes, the way we identify a tree or a person is by the kind of fruit that is produced”. We have control over the type of fruit and results we will produce. While we have that control shouldn’t we do some self-introspection and pruning to be sure that we are producing at the level and abundance that we, and God, wants us to be producing?

Reference: Matthew 7:20 (New Living Testament)