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 2726: Facades

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“Everything they do is for show. On their arms they wear extra wide prayer boxes with Scripture verses inside, and they wear robes with extra long tassels.”

No industry I know is better at creating facades as is the real estate industry. To some extent, all businesses do it by always putting their best foot forward by capturing the best of the company in both words and pictures when selling, raising money or recruiting.  But, we all know there is a line where when we cross it the other side of the communication recognizes that someone is trying to pull the wool over someone else’s eyes.  So, we have to be careful.  What prompted me to think about this was a real estate ad I saw for a dilapidated seaside cottage that in the picture (best they could do) it appeared that one more big storm would be the end of the place.  The picture’s caption said, “The charm has been maintained.” That was a classic.

Maybe it my increasing years (like the way I didn’t say, growing older) that the facade of myself and others seems more obvious and important.  Possibly it is because when we are younger, no one really expects that you might be the same person that you are in Facebook or Instagram and that once you settle down, the real person will emerge.  Is that why we call them “phases” that people go through?  But, at a certain point, what you see, needs to be what you get.  So, the facades that we build and put out there, if not aligned with what is inside us, will catch up with us and that reconciliation never ends up well unless we do it on our own volition. Jesus warns us about being someone on the outside that we aren’t on the inside.  The question as we work today, “Are we the same person here today in the office as we profess to be outside of work or have we built a false facade?”

Reference: Matthew 23:5 (New Living Translation)