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 2112: Sharing The Efforts

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“Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a sleeping mat. They tried to take him inside to Jesus, but they couldn’t reach him because of the crowd. So they went up to the roof and took off some tiles. Then they lowered the sick man on his mat down into the crowd, right in front of Jesus.”

Do we know anyone who doesn’t like to share the spotlight, or when challenged to work on a team as a peer that they push against being just one of the gang?  We need leaders and employees who are willing to take the bull by the horns and move things forward, but we also need those same people to be willing at times to just take one part of the effort and move along with everyone else.  It’s almost harder to teach a sole contributor to become a team player than it is to get a team member to step forward and take the lead.  We need different strategies for different people and it’s important that we are always working on this.

In the account of when Jesus healed the paralyzed man whom had been lowered through the roof into the room below where Jesus was ministering, we read of the men who carried the paralyzed man and then lowered him from above.  I picture the sleeping mat turning into a stretcher that they used, likely requiring a man on each corner to be able to control the weight as it carried the man’s descent.  I see the metaphor that sometimes, or maybe many times, we need to be willing to just carry one corner to help someone else.  We aren’t always asked to carry all the weight, but when we are asked to help, even just a little, it can go a long way, even to the presence of Jesus.

Reference: Luke 5:18-19 (New Living Translation)