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 2780: Herd Accountability

purposed worKING No Comments

“If the entire Israelite community sins by violating one of the Lord’s commands, but the people don’t realize it, they are still guilty.“

We are going to hear a lot this week about “Herd Immunity”.  I’m not a doctor of course, but I can understand that populations of animals (extended to humans in this case) will gain immunity to something once exposed and it passes through the herd.  It follows with “herd mentality”, which we see every day when someone starts something and everyone follows.  We pay people to do this, they are called “social media influencers”.  But, even before we had technology we were prone to follow others more blindly than we should because it is human nature to be exposed to someone who reflects back to us our thoughts, fears, desires, needs and values and then we take to them, and end up following those people.  It’s natural and it’s also risky.  For when the herd (team, company, organization) all fall into lockstep for the right things, we see alignment.  When we do so for the wrong, we see bad things happen like malpractice, fraud, collusion, conspiracy and theft.  And it is then, that we (the herd) become guilty by association.  It is upon each of us, personally, to stand strong against the herd and to be sure that we are taking personal accountability in everything we think, do and say.

From one of the earliest books of the Bible we see that we are held accountable to each other as part of being together.  Let’s remember this as we work with others.  If each and every person on a team or in a company were to take accountability for the team, imagine how strong and fortified the team would be?  But, it starts with each of us personally first in making sure that we are strong, centered and grounded in Him so that we can play our part in keeping the herd accountable and best we can, immune, from those things that will tear us down and tear us apart.

Reference: Leviticus 4:13 (New Living Translation)