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 2881: Retention

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“At this point many of his disciples turned away and deserted him.”

The business cycle, as we know, goes through stages.  We expand and then we contract, over and over.   And, so goes our talent cycles.  We acquire and then we divest.  Somewhere in there we also pay attention to the retention of those we don’t want to leave, or we will say we “can’t afford” to lose these certain people.  And, so we then pay attention to retaining those employees and focus on their needs, desires and dreams.  The U.S. economy contracted and we all hope and pray for a recovery, but for right now, we are seeing more attention on retaining the talent that we have versus out hiring more.  There are many strategies for retaining people but I think in this time of virtual working that there’s never been a more important time than now to focus on matching the values and principles of a company and their people.  For what we believe in is what we want to be a part of.  What we don’t, or when we see conflict between our values and principles and what an organization espouses, we either won’t join, or if we are already there,  we will look for someplace else to spend our time.  Companies “can’t afford” to lose great people.  Great people “won’t spend” their time or energy with those whom they don’t align at the core of who they are.

Jesus gave us the metaphor of the lost sheep and how even one mattered so greatly.  But, He also recognized that we are not always wandering sheep. We can also be deliberate leavers.  Jesus challenged His Disciples at the core of their beliefs and some just left.  Because they were called His Disciples, they had obviously already made a choice to join up with Jesus, but as they got closer and time went on, the matching of their beliefs didn’t match up with what  Jesus told them, and they left Him. What I take from this is that Jesus was telling us that He wants to retain each and every one of us as His, but it still comes down to us and the choices that we make.  He is the God of retention but He is also the God that allows us to personally choose to be retained, or not.  It’s up to us.

Reference:  John 6:66 (New Living Translation)