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 2740: Retention

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“Yes, each of you should remain as you were when God called you.”

As the New Year unfolds, it becomes a time when the recruiters and headhunters come calling. They know that annual bonuses will be soon paid and that we feel more free to look around for the next job.  And companies are in a new budget cycle and those open positions can now begin to be worked to be filled. Now, is the time of the year to double down on retention efforts.  Recognition, evaluations, promotions, etc. should be paid attention to before we find ourselves behind the curve and trying to play defense to another company’s offensive moves.

The idea of retention has Biblical implications.  Lake Lambert, in his book, “Spirituality, Inc.” writes about how Calvin in the book, “‘The Institutes’, considered a main problem of the Christian life to be human mobility and restlessness that would lead Christians to abandon God-given work because of the hardships associated with it. His fear was not that Christians would hold too fast to the status-quo, but rather they would be too likely to roam, looking for a nonexistent occupation without hardship.”  Both Calvin and Lambert nailed it.  We would be wise to question the source of that restlessness we feel and the messages we receive that we must always be moving to something else in our work.  God wants us to achieve and succeed but He also surely doesn’t want us obsessed and driven by our next job move.

Reference: 1 Corinthians 7:20 (New Living Translation)