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 1049: “I Really Shouldn’t”

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“For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”

The holidays are always a time of gauging how good, or not, a company is at providing customer service. Patience is not the virtue of lots of customers who received a gift that didn’t fit, or wasn’t what they wanted and are faced with the obstacle now of “working” to exchange the item for something that might be better. This is, as Stephen Covey would say is, “the moment of truth”. I had one of these experiences with a retailer who did not fulfill their delivery commitment by Christmas (as I paid for) and was promised. So, the day after Christmas the extended wait on the phone made me think that the double entendre of it being “boxing day” was probably being fulfilled.  When I finally reached the agent and after explaining my problem, the customer service rep said to me, “Well, I really shouldn’t” and then went on to give the refund of the extra shipping costs and then extending it also to my next purchase. I was pleased with the outcome but as I hung up I did think that hearing, “I really shouldn’t” can go both ways.  It may well be that the policy is that he shouldn’t have, and he might be getting in hot water, or that he can do this without asking but thought that making it look like it was an above and extra move would make me good or feel a little guilty.  That’s not so good either.  So, when we think about what our customer service message is, we need to be sure that we are aligning policy, message and takeaways to fully satisfy the customer.

Satisfying others, especially those who are in need, means giving up of ourselves in some respect. Seldom when someone else wants or needs something from us does it align with what we really want to do or have happen.  So, we must give to satisfy and meet needs.  We just completed celebrating our greatest gift from God.  Think about what He gave up to meet the forgiveness of our sins and provide us salvation. Each day in our work we face moments when a little voice inside of us says, “I really shouldn’t.”  When that voice is reinforcing a selfishness about how we decide to give of ourselves to others, or not, then we need to respond, with “I really must”.  If God can give so much for us, what is holding us back from giving of ourselves to others?

Reference: John 3:16 (New Living Translation)