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 2307: “Hey, I’ve Got To Cancel”

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“Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”

“Hey, I’ve got to cancel”.  How many times have we each typed out these words, or a version of them, in an email or text?  I admit that I have done it plenty of times and way too many times over the past months of shifting travel, late renovations and changing obligations. I hate changing plans as I know I am wasting someone else’s time.  However, I read this past week that there is a subtle but real mental relaxation that people get when they cancel on something.  I have thought hard about it, and I think it’s probably true as Patti and I will move things around like theater tickets or events that we are planning to go, but if we don’t show, it doesn’t bother anyone else…and when we do, we feel like we have gained time and space.  But, it’s a bad habit to get into and I fear that if we do it at home, we probably are doing it at work. Consider the number of times that meetings get cancelled or rescheduled?  Lots!  Imagine a workplace where meetings couldn’t be rescheduled or cancelled.  My guess is that if we had that discipline, we’d schedule a lot less meetings.  Maybe it is worth a try.

Could “follow-through” be trait of Christ that we should be trying to emulate?  Let’s consider it for a moment. When we don’t follow-through on something we said we would do (something simple like a meeting or a phone call), then we are letting someone else down, breaking our word, and taking from another their most precious resource, which is time. And then we consider that Jesus came to the world with one ultimate appointment with destiny.  He prayed that if God saw it fit to remove His assignment, then let it be so.  But, when it was time and the cup didn’t pass, He followed through.  Look, our little daily commitments aren’t anything in comparison to the crucifixion of Jesus, but to others what we think is small, could be huge for them.  What we don’t know is how much time, energy and sacrifices they made to be ready for that meeting where we so easily said, “Hey, I’ve got to cancel.”

Reference: Luke 22:42 (New Living Translation)