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 1042: Rule of Reciprocity

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“Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets”

Christmas has passed and the presents are open and it’s time to think about thank you cards being sent.  Why do we send thank you notes? It comes down to it’s in our culture and that we do actually follow the rule of reciprocity.  This example was taken from a recent NPR story by reporter, Alix Spiegel.

“In 1974, Phillip Kunz and his family got a record number of Christmas cards. In the weeks before Christmas they came daily, sometimes by the dozen. Kunz still has them in his home, collected in an old photo album.

“Dear Phil, Joyce and family,” a typical card reads, “we received your holiday greeting with much joy and enthusiasm … Merry Christmas and Happy New Year’s. Love Lou, Bev and the children.”
The cards from that year came in all shapes and sizes, but the basic message was the same. The writers wanted Kunz to know that he and his family were cared for, and also they wanted to share their own news. They included pictures of family members and new homes and smiling graduates with freshly minted diplomas. It all seems pretty normal, except for one thing: Kunz didn’t know any of them.
Kunz was a sociologist at Brigham Young University. Earlier that year he’d decided to do an experiment to see what would happen if he sent Christmas cards to total strangers. And so he went out and collected directories for some nearby towns and picked out around 600 names. “I started out at a random number and then skipped so many and got to the next one,” he says. To these 600 strangers, Kunz sent his Christmas greetings: handwritten notes or a card with a photo of him and his family. And then Kunz waited to see what would happen.

“It was just, you know, a shot in the dark,” he says. “I didn’t know what would happen.”
But about five days later, responses started filtering back — slowly at first and then more, until eventually they were coming 12, 15 at a time. Eventually Kunz got more than 200 replies. “I was really surprised by how many responses there were,” he says. “And I was surprised by the number of letters that were written, some of them three, four pages long.” Why would someone send a three-page letter to a complete and total stranger? Why did so many people write him back at all?”

And, today the Kunzs’ continue to receive those cards.

How often do we think of the rule of reciprocity for our businesses?  The rule is the same for businesses as individuals.

As believers we know the rule of reciprocity as the “Golden Rule”.  We also know that we don’t give to be given to, but instead we give because of the ultimate that gift that was given to us.  As we begin to think about the coming year and we set our goals, etc.  let’s consider how we can mesh the rule of reciprocity and the Golden Rule even more so in our lives.

Reference:  Matthew 7:12 (New Living Translation)