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 2878: Deeper Than Knowing

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“But those who wish to boast should boast in this alone: that they truly know me and understand that I am the Lord who demonstrates unfailing love and who brings justice and righteousness to the earth, and that I delight in these things. I, the Lord, have spoken!”

Two interesting words are “Know” and “Understand”.  We can actually know something, like a fact or an occurrence but not truly understand what it is that we know.  Like, we know a rule but we don’t understand why that rule is in place.  And, if we don’t understand, then we are less likely to want to follow or abide by that rule.  I often wonder why we see so many examples of people flaunting rules, or laws, and I think it must come down to a lack of one of the definitions of understanding, “to accept as a fact or truth or regard as plausible without utter certainty”.  Understanding is to decide to be more than okay with it; to go further and adopt it as a way of thinking and being.  That’s a  challenge of driving change in our companies today; getting people to move beyond just knowing to understanding.  I see it becoming even harder as we wrestle with the effects of distanced working and uncertainties of the future.  It takes time to develop an understanding of anything, but that is what we need if we are going to have aligned teams with shared objectives.  So, the question to ask is what do we know but have not come to a true understanding of yet that we have to spend more time on to get us all in the same place?

The Prophet  Jeremiah wrote that God said it wasn’t enough to just know Him.  We have to understand Him and then we are in the place God desires us to be.  That’s the beauty of God’s Handbook for our lives in that the understanding of His ways for us is all there in the Bible, just below the surface of the words, waiting for us to consider and contemplate so that we come to an understanding.  This week, let’s not stop with, “I know”.  Let’s be ones who commit to “I understand”.

Reference:  Jeremiah 9:24 (New Living Translation)