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 2857: The Debrief

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“Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.”

We are in a moment when checking in with someone or following up after a ZOOM Meeting or a call has become more important than maybe even before.  We all probably know that feeling now of when we leave one of these meetings we then have a feeling of emptiness or wondering of “how did that go?”.  A number of years ago I was working on a project with a co-leader and for nearly 16 months whenever Jim and I would get off of a call where there was another person (or a group) with us, immediately after the call ended one of us would call each other to “debrief”.  It became such a ritual that we both didn’t consider the meeting really over until we had talked it out.  We are missing the debriefs right now in much of what we do and taking a few extra minutes to get that moment of assurance or confirmation can make a huge difference in our attitudes and confidence.

So, who is it who should be showing more of the interest in others right now?  It should be us who are doing our best to bring glory to God as the ultimate purpose of our working. In times of stress, fast pace, pressure and confusion, the natural default is to take care of ourselves first and others second.  But, we are to be counter to that nature and yes, we are to put the interest of others, at a minimum, at the same level of our own interests.  Want to be different?  Then try putting others in front and watch what happens.  Spoiler alert: It will be good.

Reference:  Philippians 2:4 (New Living Translation)