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 2167: Quick To Open

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

I read that FedEx is doing a deal with Walgreen’s so that we soon will be able to drop-off and pick-up FedEx packages at our local Walgreen’s stores.  It makes sense to me as a pharmacy has been a place of drop-off and pick-up since we can remember and because of that they are as about as “local” as we still have.  So, this gives us another way to be quick to send and quick to receive.  Which means, that we must continue to be quick to open.  A good friend said to me recently, “You take too long to answer my emails.”  This was said by him to me without any regard to my schedule, the number of emails I receive and quite honestly, whether or not I deemed there anything necessary for me to respond.  But, his expectation, as is the expectation that is growing from all sides of our culture now, is that we are to be quick to open and quick to respond.  And those who don’t?   Well, in our new way of thinking that will only get worse with faster communication technology, “They just must not care.”

Stop for a moment and thank our God that He doesn’t judge us on our quickness to open and quickness to respond.  I was recently given a book written by Jason Henderson, titled “Not I, But Christ:”  Henderson is very insightful about how we are to learn and respond to God’s Word.  He equates the Bible as a set of packages that are addressed to us personally and it is not until we open them up do we understand what they mean for us.  I found this concept eye-opening as it makes such clear sense.  Consider this.  Two people can receive the exact same shirt as a gift.  One might be over-the-moon with the shirt and immediately put into rotation as the dress shirt that she/he will wear at the next special event.  The other person might look at the shirt, like it enough to keep it, but decide that it’s a good everyday shirt to wear with jeans and a sweater.  The same shirt represents two different types of use and meaning, but both came in the same package.  And that is God’s Word to each of us.  But, in order to know what is in the package, we have to be willing to open it up to find out.  And from there, we make the personal choice of how quick we will be to respond.

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