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 1377: Almost Not Good Enough

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“I have worked hard to provide materials for building the Temple of the Lord—nearly 4,000 tons of gold, 40,000 tons of silver, and so much iron and bronze that it cannot be weighed. I have also gathered timber and stone for the walls, though you may need to add more.”

I recently had a customer service issue with an airlines (welcome to the club, you say?). Just after the issue I tweeted the airlines to let them know my displeasure.  They were great and asked me to report it to the customer service website.  After asking way too much information I was able to distill down my complaint into the number of characters that their input field allowed.  I checked the box that I would like to hear back from them.  Off the message went and I didn’t really expect to hear anything back, but today I did and it was a very understanding email, with a “goodwill gesture” (their words, not mine) of a few thousand frequent flyer miles.  But, they missed the point of my complaint so I clarified to the person who had written the note (her name was Brenda) what had made me most unhappy and then hit send on the reply email.  The tone of Brenda’s email to me was that of wanting to improve so I thought I would lend an extra few minutes for the clarification. A second after I sent the email,  the email bounced back saying that this inbox doesn’t accept incoming emails and directed me to the customer service website, which of course wanted me to start all over.  The lesson?  It’s the last part that matters.  Almost is not good enough in customer service, or in much of our businesses.  Cutting that last corner, or not closing the loop fully can be worse than never starting it at all.

I like to write about the importance of believers and followers of Jesus being people who follow through and do their work as best humanly possible. I do this because all of the world around us is taking the short cuts and are okay with “almost”.  If we are to be bringing glory to God in our work and in our lives, then for those things that we can control, “almost” is just not enough.  I’m not talking about sin or failings, which we know we all have.  I am talking about tasks and earthly work with which we are entrusted.  The extra hours and effort that we put in to provide excellence in what we do, is the example that others will watch and demand when it comes time to talk about what it is that drives us to be our best.

Reference: 1 Chronicles 22:14 (New Living Translation)