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 1443: No Questions Asked

purposed worKING No Comments

“They didn’t ask questions, but simply dropped their nets and followed.”

I’ve always found it interesting that after someone speaks, they say, “Does anyone have any questions?”.  Asking that question of others feels to me like one is actually saying, “Who isn’t smart enough to understand me fully and needs more clarifications?”  It feels especially this way when it is a CEO or Senior Manager who asks this of their company or teams.  It takes little courage to ask if anyone has any questions, it takes a lot of courage and guts to say, “I honestly want to hear from you to understand if anyone has another point of view or other ideas”.  That’s when the rubber meets the road and we get real feedback and thoughts.  When was the last time we had the guts to out it all out there and let others refine or reshape what we are thinking?

When Jesus taught with His parables He would ask thought-provoking questions, or ask questions that the answers were telling about ourselves.  But, he also told us clearly what we should do and did so without taking questions.  When He called for His disciples to follow Him he didn’t get into a question and answer session, instead there were no questions asked and they just followed Him.  We like to question God and others about our faith and why we are following Him.  But, the disciples made it clear in their actions, that true following is doing so without a pause, without a doubt, without a question.  Jesus asks us to go all in and to do without question. In this area of our like let’s exercise the faith of no questions asked.

Reference: Matthew 4:20 (New Living Translation)