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 2029: Overnight Delivery

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“Don’t sin by letting anger control you.Think about it overnight and remain silent.”

We have little time to think today before we are expected to speak, respond or decide.  Technology based communication is like the waves of the ocean.  It just keeps coming and coming and there isn’t any turning it off.  Even when we take ourselves “off the grid” we know that the waves are splashing up on an empty beach and making a pile that will need to soon be dug out and all the way through.  And more than we like, some of the communications are going to make us angry and because we get angry, we are going to respond hastily and potentially recklessly.  Thank you FedEx for conditioning us first that we can get anything overnight.  But, there are certain things that should sit longer until they are delivered and a response that is rooted in anger is one of them.  So, let the fire burn out, toss some water on the embers and then wait until tomorrow to respond.

I’m pretty sure that King David’s advice to use overnight to think before responding would still stand in our current culture.  I sometimes forget when I read the Psalms and Proverbs that these weren’t just written by men who were inspired to capture their thoughts on parchment so they could be read thousands of years later.  These were written by men who were powerful and experienced rulers.  And they didn’t get to their thrones easily.  They were battle-tested Kings that left us with daily words of wise and experienced counsel and encouragement.  So, when we read Psalms 4:4, we should also be hearing in our minds a King on a throne passing along His best advice.  We sit at the foot of our culture’s CEOs and sometimes hang tightly on their words to help us perform and succeed.  We should give even more credence to those who God appointed Kings. Sleep on that thought tonight.

Reference: Psalm 4:4 (New Living Translation)