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 3K300: AFK Strikes

purposed worKING No Comments

“Be on guard. Stand firm in the faith. Be courageous. Be strong.”

AFK is shorthand for, “Away from Keyboard”. That is what is happening in Hollywood today as the Writer’s Guild goes on strike and lays down their pens and lifts their hands off of their keyboards until they can resolve their differences with the major Studios.  Strikes happen when a group of workers believe they can wield economic power by stop doing the work they perform.  “Management” has to then decide if that calculation is true or not and either resolve the issues and get everyone back to work or wait it out and see who, the company or the workers, feels the worst pain first.  I’ve been a part of labor disputes (on both sides) and only once did I experience a strike and it only lasted a day.  But, that one day was a breaking down of a part of a trust relationship that took years and years to build up.  What we may not realize that a “strike” is as much of a mindset as an activity. That means that while you are reading this there may be someone in your organization who is thinking that today they are just about fed up, tired of putting up with what they have to go through, needing to take a day away from the chaos, putting down their pens and backing away from their keyboards until someone hears them out and changes things for the better. It’s worth looking around and seeing who might be “striking” on their own today and needs to be listened to.

It seems to me that quitting, giving up, sitting it out, or stopping because of resentment or trying to get our way is not the path that God wants us to follow. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t supposed to stand up for what we believe and take stands, but in how we do so we can reflect Christ or not.  Jesus didn’t back down and at the same time wasn’t a quitter. Imagine that when He and His followers were being wrongly persecuted He had decided that He’d take His Disciples and head for the hills and find an outpost in the desert and create their own city and seek to withdraw from those who disagreed with Him. Had He decided to “strike”, well things would have been quite different and I doubt I’d be writing this or you’d be reading.  Instead, he modeled what Paul told us to be: on guard, firm in our faith, courageous and strong.  Let’s take that attitude to work with us today.

Reference: 1 Corinthians 16:13 (New Living Translation)