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 1133: Shutdowns


“Praise the Lord, the God of Israel, who lives from everlasting to everlasting. Amen and amen!”
Experiencing a shutdown is inevitable.  We have all had it happen and we will have it happen again.  It could be as simple as a favorite restaurant shutting down, or the dry cleaner going out of business, or our favorite TV show being cancelled.  It can also be quite painful when an expensive product we own no longer gets serviced or gets shut down. If you own a Fisker electric car you certainly know what this means. In a few months, on July 1, Google will shut down Reader. Is this cataclysmic like it might feel like when the local school gets shuttered because of budget cuts, probably not, but if you liked, used and depended on Reader, then there will be a certain amount of pain and inconvenience you will feel and probably a little grief too when it finally disappears.  Last month I was in negotiation to purchase an online service that I love and depend on heavily that will soon be shutdown if no other suitor comes along (I so wanted to make the deal, but couldn’t bring it together).  What we hope from companies is that when they shutdown or discontinue a service or product that they give us lots of warning, more than we think we need, and then over communicate with us on what we can expect and when. Google giving the amount of notice they did was great.  There is plenty of time to find other ways to manage one’s RSS needs. I’m not a Reader user, but I suspect that if I Googled how to manage RSS feeds that Google will be directing us to other great services.  The consumer relationship is a tricky one and when loyalty occurs we have to be ready to live up to what comes with it, in the good, the bad and the shutdown times.

How blessed we are to know that there will never be a shutdown of God’s love, grace and mercy over us. It is only us that create shutdowns with God and that is when we pull the plug or put something else between us and Him. I often wonder what it must feel like to God to have so much love for us and then have us turn our back or deny Him the love back.  When we aren’t living and working in a way that is extending and furthering His glory in all that we do, it is like we are shutting Him down. Consider how it is that we are working in our jobs that is shutting Him out and down?  Our words? Our actions? Our pride? Our actions toward others?  Let’s not be ones who create a shutdown!

Reference: Psalm 41:13 (New Living Translation)