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 2194: There Are No Dumb Questions…But There Are Dumb Answers

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“Anyone who claims to know all the answers doesn’t really know very much.”

For the most part, there are no dumb questions, unless someone was to have already prepared and known the question ahead of time and only asks because they haven’t done the pre-work or worked hard enough.  That said, most questions are fine to be asked and we should not hesitate to ask for clarity, rather than move ahead not fully understanding direction or the desired outcome.  But, there are dumb answers.  These are the ones that come from those who think they know it all, and really know very little.  These are the people who usually are the first to speak up without thinking and then come to find out they don’t have their facts correct.  We all know these people and we must be careful that this mode of operating doesn’t creep into the culture of our teams or company.

As I wrote last week, Jesus was masterful at using questions to answer the questions that others had of Him.  But, He was also not fearful of making declarative answers when required, but never without thought and being able to back up each of those answers with the authority of God and many times grounded in the prophecies of the writings of the Old Testament.  Our learning is that we shouldn’t be afraid to answer, but we can, and should, call on Him before we speak up.

Reference:  1 Corinthians 8:2 (New Living Translation)