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 1442: Nets

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

We all have our nets.  Nets can be considered both good things and bad things.  Nets are good in that like fishermen know, they are the tools of a trade to be mastered and thus turned into a profession.  But, we also have our nets that can tangle us and cause us to stumble.  Businesses don’t always realize the strength of their nets and will overload what they can do and then find themselves staring at an empty hole wondering how they lost market share, customers, or deals.  We would be well served to 1) know what our nets are (strengths), 2) test our nets for how much we can hold and maintain, 3) know who knows how to handle the nets well and know who gets tangled…and deal accordingly with each.

Jesus told His disciples to follow him and those who were fishermen, dropped their nets and followed Him. A few weeks ago at the church we attend here in Rhode Island during the summer the congregation had an open discussion on what it means to lay down your nets. For some, the nets represented our skills, or safety and security in the knowledge of the nets being a tool for food and employment.  For others the nets represented the tangles of life that if we drop them and give them over to Jesus they don’t any longer get in the way of being able to follow Him fully.  It’s a great question to ask of ourselves; which nets are we holding onto that we aren’t dropping?

Reference: Matthew 4:20 (New Living Translation)