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 2665: Creativity And Sustainability

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“The Son radiates God’s own glory and expresses the very character of God, and he sustains everything by the mighty power of his command. When he had cleansed us from our sins, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven.”

Anyone can have a great idea and it can come off as really creative; wowing people to the point of adoption without much evidence that it will work.  And, is it sustainable? For something to be sustainable it has to withstand the test of time, endure pressure and be threatened a few times. If the idea, product or service still is standing post all of that, we can call it sustainable. I was listening to an audio book about climate dangers and I forget who said it (part of the problem with audiobooks – that we can’t highlight on the spot), but I think it was a Mayor of a city in Brazil who was trying to come up with the big ideas to clean up his city and make it more energy efficient.  He commented that there are no shortage of creative ideas.  The problem is that they are not all sustainable and even the most creative ideas don’t really stick unless they change the economics of spending (for a company economics for spending and investing).  So, he says when looking for ideas that can really drive change (anything), if the idea adds or removes a zero, then it is creative.  If it adds or removes two zeros, then it is sustainable. It’s a different way of looking at the business ideas that are in front of us.

Given that we are made in the image of God, who was and is “The Great Creator”, you’d have to also say that He is just as much “The Great Sustainer”.  In my own life, I have not found anything that is of God that is not sustainable.  But, I can tell you that there have been many creative things of the world that have come my way that seem like the big breakthrough; health, nutrition, technology, etc. and at the end of the day, they are not as sustainable as they look at the outset, and maybe not sustainable at all for any of us. Only God can be the creator and the sustainable One in our lives.  It is to Him we can look for both!

Reference: Hebrews 1:3 (New Living Translation)