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 2773: Surface Cleaning

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“So get rid of all evil behavior. Be done with all deceit, hypocrisy, jealousy, and all unkind speech…”

I can imagine that when we get back to what we just recently called our desk that we will adopt surface cleaning practices like never before.  When was the last time you really looked at the keyboard in front of you and then cleaned it like is should be cleaned? We are fortunate that inanimate objects typically only need a good surface clean, but sometimes our software needs more that than.  So, while we are surface cleaning let’s not forget that where we can deep clean too, we should.

I was on the phone yesterday with an entrepreneur who I advise/coach.  The conversation reminded me that CEOs feel, probably more than anyone, that they need to be physically present with the company and team and when not able to do so it causes lots of stress and questioning of their value to be added.  As we were speaking, it was clear that stress and anxiety was present. After listening for a while, I heard an opportunity for the CEO to take this season of the business to do some personal cleaning up and in this case potentially a deep cleaning. It didn’t take much but with a little pointing out, quoting back, reminding and yes, nudging this CEO committed to cleaning up the language and words that had become far to easy to slip off the tongue.  I can’t remember a time in business when our hygiene mattered so much, so maybe we can take this time to both surface and deep clean those areas of our lives that also are in need of a good scrubbing!

Reference: 1 Peter 2:1 (New Living Translation)