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 2511: Reflecting Pools

purposed worKING No Comments

“For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known”

Where I went to school at Purdue we had a reflecting pool outside of the Memorial Union.  You could literally look down at the water and see yourself, almost as if it was a mirror (it was removed in 2004…ironically, the same year that Facebook launched…is that when we stopped reflecting?).  We don’t take enough time in business looking at our reflections in our customers, employees and shareholders.  We take it for granted that they see us just like we want them to see us, but let me let us in on a little secret, it isn’t always like we want it to be.  In the early days of Glassdoor companies would complain to us (some still do) that the site allows too many negative comments to be posted.  When told that over 30% of the content submitted never gets to the company page because it was all negative and the contributor was not willing to post something positive and something to improve, then those who understand branding and reputation change their tune. You see, we are never the positive reflection that we want to be so that is why we need to look down into our company reflecting pool to make sure we have it right.

I was sent a video of a funeral service that Reverend Jonathan Kitto presided over.  He tried to understand why God would allow such pain to be inflicted on a family.  He admitted he did not have an answer that could ever remove pain and be totally consoling, but he said that we should remember that we need to let love flourish even in our pain and that the, “Depth of our pain is a reflection of the depth of our love”.   Since watching that message, I have come back to this a number of times.  Inside of us we can find our reflection of feelings, emotions, pains and love.  And, we can do that in our work.  We can look to how we go about our work (with joy or drudgery), how we treat our co-workers (with respect or demands), and how we handle ourselves in the workplace (with integrity and honesty or testing the lower limits of truth and shortcuts).  And then we can ask ourselves just what kind of reflection of Christ are we today?

Reference: 1 Corinthians 13:12 (New Living Translation)