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 2369: What Is A Reference Check?

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“You are not defiled by what you eat; you are defiled by what you say and do.”

It seems a silly question, “What is a reference check?”, when we all have probably participated in one in some form, either as the one doing the reference, being a reference for someone else, or being the candidate who is being checked out. Reference checks have always been important, but many times have been thought of as a cursory activity that will yield nothing of substance.  Think about this for a moment.  We do all of these reference checks on people but yet we still end up with bad actors in our companies, but yet, no one spoke out before they were hired.  We have been, and still are, faced with story after story of people with multiple occurrences of misconduct in the workplace, with many that span decades. How can it be that no one ever said anything as one person went from company to company?  Sure, it could be fear of retribution or lawsuits.  It could also be that we never talk to the right people as we never check beyond the people the candidate gives us.  But, it could also be that we don’t know the right things to ask.  I know from too many experiences that the act that get someone immediately terminated didn’t just start in that one day.  There is always a walk-up of smaller infractions that build and are without consequences that give someone the perceived moral authority to commit a larger and worse act. And, then everything blows up. It’s not the movies where someone decides one day to become a bank robber. Long before someone becomes a bank robber they stole from family, friends, neighbors, convenience stores, etc.  They hone a craft until they are ready for the big time.  And so it is with the egregious behaviors in the workplace.  So, we’d be smart to rethink our reference checking process and think hard about what it is that we want to understand about what someone is doing today, so that we can protect ourselves from what they might do in the future.

Jesus warns us that our behaviors come from the heart and once we begin defiling the heart, it’s a slippery slope.  I am reminded about this often.  I chose a long time ago to remove words from my vocabulary that I felt if I used them, would cause someone confusion as to where I stand in my beliefs and relationship with Jesus. But, I also have to check myself, because, it becomes easy to repeat or quote others and use those words in that way.  When I find myself wanting to do that, I have to ask myself, “Why?”  It’s usually something in my heart that just isn’t right. Look, it’s a small thing, and maybe a silly example, but we each have the small and the large areas of our lives in which we struggle. What Jesus is telling us to do is to reference check our hearts against our actions to be sure that we don’t have something awry and worse, something percolating that could end up boiling over.

Reference: Matthew 15:11 (New Living Translation)