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 1535: All In

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“When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.”

So, imagine you are sitting in a work meeting and someone makes a proposal to make a huge investment (like everything you have) into a new venture and not only that, but to take the company’s three best people and send them off to work on this new venture, with no real understanding of when or what they will produce.  And, when asked “Why should we do this?”, the answer from the person making the proposal is, “Because, I saw a sign that now is the right time.”  What would you do?  I know what I would likely do.  I’d probably laugh them out of the room and ask them to come back when they have the data and facts to back up their “hunch”.  Well, wouldn’t you do that too?  Most of us would, and mostly we would be right.  But, every now and then…

Three very rich, wise and educated men did just what I described above.  They saw a light in the sky, what we know to be a star and dropped everything, made all in investments in time, gifts (money) and effort and journeyed to see baby Jesus. And while, it was more than a “hunch”, to all others who they tried to explain their trip, it had to look foolish and ill-advised to do what they were going to do. But, isn’t that always the way it is when we go “all-in” on something? To everyone else, we look crazy, but on the back side, others wonder what they missed that the committed saw.  God asks us to go “all-in” with Him and assures us that even though we might look to others as a little off, a little naive, a little ill-informed, etc. that on the backside the promise is more than anyone else could ever imagine.  I suspect the same was true for the wise-men when they first saw Jesus and were then so over joyed that they had gone “all-in”.

Reference:  Matthew 2:10-11 (New Living Translation)