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 3K323: Required Skill

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“When you enter the home, give it your blessing. If it turns out to be a worthy home, let your blessing stand; if it is not, take back the blessing.”

If in 2013, ten years ago, I’d have written that Human Connectivity would be a limited, sought after and a required skill in 2023, the reaction might have been, “Duh?”.  But today in 2023 there is a high concern that in the coming years that being adept in Human Connectivity is going to be a critical and hard to find skill.  Jim VandeHeis says, “This might strike you as a peculiar “skill.” But with more people than ever working in isolation (outside the office, alone at home), the experience, empathy and emotional joy that flow from learning to work with and shape others will grow greatly in importance. It’s impossible to learn to manage or lead if you stare at a screen and rarely see others in person. One thing machines will never be is us.”  Be ready for next year’s training and management development budget to include courses on how to teach others to better connect with each other.

Jesus had to give instructions to His Disciples on how to interact with others.  He took fishermen, tax collectors, workers and turned them into teachers, speakers, those who could cast our evil spirits, and healers without really any formal training.  They’d observed Jesus and then He sent them out with a list of to do’s and don’t do’s. Talk about the greatest example of on-the-job training ever!  What this says to me is that we, with our knowledge of God’s Word no matter how great or small are ready to share the love of God with others. We don’t need years and years of education to be able to tell others what we have seen God do in our lives and others.  That was what the Disciples did and look what they started?!

Reference: Matthew 10: 12-13 (New Living Translation)