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 2766: Garbage Language

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“My words are plain to anyone with understanding, clear to those with knowledge.”

From the title of this post, you can probably already imagine what you are going to read about how we should and shouldn’t speak.  That is correct, but I’m going to take a different angle than maybe what is expected.  Anna Weiner wrote in her latest book, “Uncanny Valley” that corporations in Silicon Valley speak in “Garbage Language”.  This means that they grab onto words and then make that part of their corporate lexicon and culture.  Silicon Valley is not unique here.  Every company, every organization, has their own set of words that are used to fill space or describe something that could much more easily said, but they just might not sound as “smart” as using one of these new words. Reporter, Molly Young, captured a bunch of these in a recent article on the site, Vulture. Here’s a few: “Parallel Pathing, Growth Hacking, Syncs (vs meetings), Radar Screen, Complexify, Co-Execute, Replatform, Shareability,” etc.  You get the idea. When we speak in terms that others have to wonder what they mean, then are we creating productivity or just leaving room for interpretation, thus wasting time?

We know that our language should not be the description of “garbage” as we are not to use vulgar word, if we are trying to bring glory to God in our work. But, I would go as far as to say that we should also be cognizant of how we use “Garbage Language” as Weiner defines.  Why?  Because one of the most important things we can do is to respect others and what is more precious to all of us than our time.  So, if we are doing things that waste others times then we have to ask ourselves, are doing right by them?  So, let’s be respectful and sensitive to all in how we communicate.

Reference: Proverbs 8:9 (New Living Translation)