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 3K53: What’s a Poka-Yoke?

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“The king asked, “Well, how can I help you?”  With a prayer to the God of heaven,  I replied, “If it please the king, and if you are pleased with me, your servant, send me to Judah to rebuild the city where my ancestors are buried.”

What’s a Poka-Yoke?  That’s exactly what I wondered when Seth Godin wrote about them recently.  So, I looked it up.  And once again, the internet delivered: POKA-YOKE is a Japanese term. It is used to indicate a design choice or apparatus that imposes restrictions on how an operation can be carried out to force the user to do so correctly. This composite word literally means “avoid (yokeru) careless mistakes (poka)”.  These Poka-Yokes are all around us, even to the point that we don’t even notice them anymore.  In fact, I can’t send this post without confirming to WordPress that I really want it to be posted.  Same as my car makes me depress the brake pedal before I can put it in gear to drive forward or reverse.  Too bad we don’t have more Poka-Yokes around our work that make us stop, think, rethink and the consider the consequences before we take action.  Poka-Yokes seem like really good ideas.

Nehemiah said a prayer before he acted.  That one prayer action (now named after him) has become for many a part of their routine.  It’s like asking God to be our Poka-Yoke so that He might restrict us before we do something harmful or stupid.  We need God to curb us when we need curbed, probably even more than we need Him to encourage us.  If we get through His Poka-Yoke then we can feel assured that what comes next will be of His will.  That’s doesn’t mean it will all go perfectly or have guaranteed success, but it does mean that we can move forward with the confidence that He is with us.

Reference:  Nehemiah 2:4-5 (New Living Translation)