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 2320: Keep Chopping Wood

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“We use God’s mighty weapons, not worldly weapons, to knock down the strongholds of human reasoning and to destroy false arguments.”

I had the pleasure yesterday of riding in a Lyft with a special person.  He and I come from very different backgrounds and experiences. He grew up in Oakland and had never left except for short-lived football scholarship at a school in South Dakota. He has four children from two different relationships with his oldest getting ready to go to college and his youngests being small children who he gets to see every other weekend.  A few years ago when he was in his early 40’s he woke up at 2:30AM and couldn’t breathe. Fortunately, after he fell unconscious on the kitchen floor his Mother heard his fall and the first respondents saved his life from a pulmonary embolism. For our nearly 40 minute trip we talked life.  That life conversation included how contrasting we were growing up as different races and what we were taught, politics, education, socio-economics, music, family and faith.  As we were nearing my destination he told me that he has to keep living one day at a time because his Dad told him that when it seems we can’t go any further, just pick back up the axe and keep chopping wood.  And that is what he does, each and every day…he just keeps chopping wood.  As I got out of the car and wished him a Merry Christmas I actually wished we could have driven further just to keep talking.  I write this because how often do any of us ever hear that our customers wish they could spend more time with us?  It’s rare, but when it happens it is magical and meaningful.  Who do we have on our teams who know how to create that type of customer interaction?

Each day, we wake up to go about our work and on some days it just feels like all we can do is to keep chopping wood to get by.  We encounter all kinds of obstacles in our jobs from people, customers, vendors, etc.  But, we must keep chopping. We have no choice.  But, we do have more than the axe we are handed to get through all the things that come at us that try to set us back.  God says to use His mighty weapons to get past these things. So yes, keep chopping, but let Him guide us through.

Reference: 2 Corinthians 4:10 (New Living Translation)