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 3K62: Feedback That Goes Unheard

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“But God did listen! He paid attention to my prayer.”

Wonder why people just up and quit on us?  We think all is going well and then “surprise”, they leave.  We do exit interviews and we talk about the drivers of their departure and somewhere down deep we might hear something to the effect that they were trying to tell us something, but they didn’t feel heard.  I don’t remember who said this, but it stuck with me that a prime catalyst of turnover is that someone gave feedback that went unheard.  And, after one goes to the trouble, and sometimes risk, to provide honest and direct feedback, only to be ignored or unheard, then it will feel that everything that could be done and said is out there, so moving on is the next best choice.  It’s enough to make us stop and think…what feedback have we been given that we haven’t yet heard?

Imagine that God told us that He listens to us but may or may not act on our prayers?  I doubt many of us would pray and seek to have a conversation with God if that was the case.  Instead, we have the gift of His promise to always hear and respond.  That should make us want to go to Him incessantly with all that we have.

Reference:  Psalm 66:19 (New Living Translation