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 2534: Bold Moves – Part 4: Synergy

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“But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!”

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

When we see how many entertainment extensions happen for a Marvel comics character or story, we expect that the comic book always spawns a movie that has a soundtrack album, physical toys, TV show, etc.  In truth, these days any new entertainment property won’t get off the ground unless the tie-ins are many and encompasses just about every medium.  It’s called finding synergies.  But it wasn’t always that way.  In 1954 Walt Disney needed to finance the crazy idea of building a Theme Park based off of the Disney characters and stories.  Who funded it and why? Disneyland was paid for by ABC television (long, long before ABC owned Disney) so that they could get a weekly Sunday night TV show about this new Disneyland.  No surprise that the TV show drove not only ratings (ran for 30 years) but it also drove people to visit Disneyland and later Disneyworld.  It all seems so easy now, but back then, it was ground breaking (in more ways than one) and still today we are learning new lessons on how to tie our digital presence to our physical locations and our products into synergistic experiences and offerings.  Walt Disney thought to the future and then used the present to tie things together.

God has given us a set of offerings that if we choose to accept them and then tie them together, we can find synergies in how we work and live for Him. Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self-control are the fruits that can be borne when we allow His spirit to lead and drive our lives. It’s not easy, but our life all comes together when we look for His synergies first.

Reference:  Galatians 5:22-23 (New Living Translation)