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 2539: Bold Moves – Part 9: Reconciling First

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“…Go and be reconciled to that person. Then come and offer your sacrifice to God.”

Fast Company Magazine recently ran an article about 10 CEO moves that changed business. We can learn from each of them.

When someone gets hurt because of what we do in business, it is a higher standard that must be held.  Whether it is when someone is injured on the job, or a customer is hurt in one of our locations, or worse yet, our product or service causes someone harm.  The typical response we might have is the one the lawyers give us; be quite and let this work its way through the legal system.  There is wisdom in that advice, but it never quite feels right.  In 2014, General Motors had a safety crisis and instead of waiting for the lawsuits to drag through the system, newly appointed CEO, Mary Barra, decided that GM would be proactive and go ahead and compensate those who had been injured.  Will it set a new standard?  I doubt that everyone will feel that same level of concern and care, but for GM, it now sets them apart.

We are to be quick in both forgiving and making right what we have done wrong. We can wait and see how things play out or we can follow our teachings and make things right before we are told to do so.  Today, we will likely hurt someone (let’s hope not physically) and we will need to make it right. Let’s always be on the side of making things right and reconciling first!

Reference: Matthew 5:24 (New Living Translation)