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 2537: Bold Moves – Part 7: The Big Reveal

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“After his baptism, as Jesus came up out of the water, the heavens were opened[a] and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and settling on him.  And a voice from heaven said, “This is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy.”

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

No one had ever seen anything like it.  Out to the stage walks the brash, upstart and yet to be proven tech exec with a bag.  From inside the bag he brings out a box and the box says, “Hello, I’m Macintosh. It sure is great to get out of that bag.”  And from then on, the reveal of new technology always comes in the form of bigger and bigger. Just tune into any part of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January if you don’t believe me.  Steve Jobs was part showman in the way he evangelized his products. I was fortunate enough to have known him for a period of time. Wanting to stump me, he quizzed, “We are about to release a product that will change the world and it fits in your pocket and it’s not a camera or a phone, what is it?”  At the time, the last thing the world needed and certainly not what I was going to respond with was, “A better mp3 player?”.  But, that ipod, while it may not have changed the world, it did change the way we consume music and how we thought about technology fitting into our everyday lives (maybe it did change the world).  We could take a lesson or two from Steve on how to reveal our newest products or services.  If we put all of our time and energy into what we have been working on, doesn’t it deserve as big of a reveal as we can get?

In my mind, the biggest and greatest reveal in the history of mankind was what we read in Matthew 3:16-17.  God brought Jesus to us in the form of a baby, allowed Him to grow into a man and then when God felt it was the right time  for Jesus and for the people who He would minister (remember John the Baptist did all of the pre-sales and pre-marketing) God made his big reveal. I think this is also part and parcel of our lives. We come to a point where He reveals Himself to us in a way that is personal to us, strikes us in the heart, grabs us, and gets our attention and then we get to choose to accept a new way of life, or not. God was the creator of the big reveal and challenges us daily to see if we want to keep that reveal going for Him. Are we up to the challenge?

Reference: Matthew 3:16-17 (New Living Translation)