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 1908: Burn The Ships

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I wrote this last week for Cornerstone church for use in their post-Easter week devotional series.

Business leaders like to draw upon a certain story when they are trying to get people and teams to try something new and not let their fears hold them back. They describe the explorer Cortes and how lore has it that in order to get everyone to commit to landing on a new shore, overcoming their fears and not being able to turn back, Cortes ordered, “Burn the ships!”. That declaration usually conjures up what it is that we must leave behind, that we keep returning to, that must be “burnt” so that we have no choice but to move forward. I have found in business that we need this lesson even more when the vision of where we are going is less clear and takes us having to trust our leaders in what they say will be there for us when we arrive. What we all know, is that change is not easy, and many times we must be asked to leave behind what has gotten us to where we are to date. That is just really hard!

When Jesus gathered His disciples, He commanded them to follow Him (note, He didn’t ask) and threw out a crazy notion of “fishing for people”. If we were using this as a case study on leadership techniques it wouldn’t pass the MBA Grad School test for sure. At the same time, Jesus was telling Peter, Andrew, James and John to leave the one place that they knew and trusted, the shore, to follow Him. He was telling them to “burn the ships” and don’t look back. What faith that took of the disciples as they walked away, not to return. That’s the faith Jesus looks for in us when He tells us to also “Follow Him”. In this Easter season we are given far more of what the future looks like than what the disciples were given. We know that Jesus was who He said He was and gave His all for us and He even described where He has gone to prepare for us to meet Him. If after all of that, we still don’t follow then it must be that there are some ships in our lives – holding us back, calling us to retreat – that it is time to burn away, so that we can move forward fully in our following of Jesus.