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 3K299: Are We Underhanded?

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“We reject all shameful and underhanded methods.”

Wouldn’t it be great if we could always count on everyone at work being straight-forward, to the point, well-intentioned and never underhanded?  Hmm, if this was the case, do you think we would still call it work? It just doesn’t work this way does it? Dictionary.com provides this list of underhanded synonyms: clandestine, covert, crooked, cunning, devious, dirty, dishonest, fraudulent, furtive, secret, shady, shifty, shorthanded, sly, sneaky, subversive, surreptitious, unethical, unfair, unscrupulous, and wily. As I read through the list, a few people from my career came to mind. It is a bit disheartening to think that I can put names on these words but it is reality. Companies are like small cities (and sometimes big cities) and if we think that everyone in a city is honest, above-board and trustworthy, then where are all the other people that caused us to enact laws and regulations to be protected from them? Take a look at your company handbook sometime and you can be assured that for every policy you see in there that addresses a problem, that somewhere along the way, someone did something that caused that policy to be created. The larger and more detailed the policy book, the more troubles the company once must have had. It’s like walking the pages of shame.

Yes, people can be underhanded on our jobs and sometimes these actions can be pervasive and built into the culture. But, that doesn’t mean that we should be that way. We must be known as the antonyms of underhanded; open, public, fair, honest, decent, honorable, principled, pure, trustworthy, truthful, not corrupted and upright. Paul tells us as much in 2 Corinthians 4:2. Yes, we must reject these and not allow ourselves to get pulled into those areas where being underhanded could define our actions. So, check and be sure that a corner is not being cut, something that is lurking in the dark gets brought to the light, and that we have nothing to hide today in what and how we do our jobs.

Reference: 2 Corinthians 4:2 (New Living Translation)