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 2542: Performance Analysis

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“No discipline is enjoyable while it is happening—it’s painful! But afterward there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way.”

We’ve been after precision in manufacturing since the beginning of the industrial age. With each advancement of technology we’ve gotten more and more precise in how we construct and assemble. I was fortunate enough a few weeks ago to have a private tour of the United States’ newest linear accelerator facility for the generation of rare isotope beams. I’d always thought I’d seen when I worked at Pratt & Whitney as that being about the most complex and precision based process one could imagine, but then there was this.  Just the millions of sensors monitoring and measuring the performance of each part of the machinery is enough to boggle the mind.  Yesterday, I referenced the McLaren Formula One Team Chief and his focus on precision in performance and the analysis he does to get to the best performance possible.  He defines Performance Analysis as, “A specialist discipline involving systematic observation of performance allowing the provision of objective statistical and visual feedback.”  I like it and we could use more of this in all that we do.  Too many times we ignore being systematic in our observations and then let those observations to not be swayed or moved by objective statistical information or other visual feedback that is obtained. This is why we make many mistakes. At the end of the day, we are human and it’s hard to change what we have already decided.  But, we have to be open to what the performance analysis reveals.

It’s pretty difficult to find someone who will say, “I love discipline!”.  We might say we like to be “disciplined” but that is self-discipline, not the external forces or others correcting us, which we don’t like.  God says we should though appreciate and welcome the discipline that comes from Him. We can, if we think that His discipline is like His performance analysis being implemented for us daily. While we can’t always realize it at the time, God is the fairest of all so that means He provides us with objective feedback that can’t be refuted and in fact, if we allow it, we can see it ourselves.  I like that God might like to provide us performance analysis, because that means He wants us to be the best we can be, to reach our whole human being potential, and to be as close to Him as we want to be.  We already know that God can count anything, at any time, far beyond what any computer have created.  So, if we believe that, when He reveals feedback and discipline for us, then we should pay close attention.  The results could be far beyond anything we ever imagined.

Reference: Hebrews 11:12 (New Living Translation)