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 3K218: Irony

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“Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.”

When in conversation the other day with a fellow believer who has a startup he is trying to fund, he described a time that He felt like God was trying to tell him something as being “ironic”.  It got me thinking.  Does God practice irony as He instructs and leads us?  I looked for the definition and examples of irony and found this, “In an ironic phrase, one thing is said, while another thing is meant. For example, if it were a cold, rainy gray day, you might say, “What a beautiful day!” Or, alternatively, if you were suffering from a bad bout of food poisoning, you might say, “Wow, I feel great today.”  But, as I also read, “Irony has the capacity to clarify an incident and express what is important about it”.  As I reflected on that, I can see how irony can be used to make the point and certainly for humor, but it can also be used for sarcasm.  Yes, we can use irony to make a point and get away with it, but it takes some mastering and I wonder if irony is useful or more often is used more as a crutch when we should have just been direct and to the point?  It’s worth thinking about as we consider how we communicate to others who want and need as clear, consistent and concise communication as they can get.

Jesus spoke in Parables (more to come on that in coming PwK posts), but I don’t read irony directly from Him, but in the Gospels irony is utilized (in the right way) to make the point that Jesus was who He said He was and that we as ordinary people struggled to accept Him (then and now) for what He has done for us and is doing today.  Research Professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School since 1979, Donald Carson, captured one of four ironies of the Cross that he writes about this way:  “The irony is this: while he hung on the cross in ignominy, odium, and shame, while he was unimaginably weak, he was powerfully bringing about the destruction of the temple and raising it again. It was precisely by this means that his power was being exercised. He was on the way to death and resurrection. All four of the Gospels, not just Matthew, drive toward the passion narrative and then to the resurrection. While they were mocking him for his weakness, he was doing what he said he would. The man who was utterly powerless was transcendentally powerful.”  That is powerful irony.

Reference: John 14:6 (New Living Translation)