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 1008: Bad Comes Easily

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“Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve.”

Ever notice how hard the work is to make something good happen but how easily the bad things happen?  Nowhere in business is this probably more true than in the efforts to achieve great quality.  To make it perfect each and every time is really hard work, but with just the slightest slip, miss, or imperfection the whole quality thing goes right out the door. Sometimes, it is just as simple as being on time.  A few weeks ago I was waiting for a company that was coming to the house to do some installation work.  The day before they confirmed the time they would be there. This was good. the next day, after a half hour of waiting past the appointed time, I emailed, to ask where they were?  This was bad. I got an immediate response that they were getting ready to pull in my driveway. That was funny as I was standing in my driveway waiting for them.  15 minutes later they arrived.  This was bad. Now, my afternoon was shot and I was pushing back and cancelling other things (messing up other people) and worse, they were so behind that they were going to make up the time in my appointment and they visibly rushed to the point that I wondered if they were being thorough or not.  That is the way of good turning to bad; it is hard and takes discipline and commitment to be consistently good.  But, bad comes easily so we have to work just as hard to protect ourselves from making that one slip that can ruin or damage the reputation of the company and ourselves.

Our spiritual life can feel the same. Is it not easy to live the life that Jesus asked us to live.  He said it Himself multiple times.  And on the other side, it seems so easy to live the life that is the opposite. What it comes down to is that this life of following Jesus is an active one.  We cannot be passive and expect that we will stay in the good.  God gave us the power of choice and the price of that choice is that we have to want and actively pursue it.  Don’t get me wrong, we don’t work for our salvation. It is without doubt a gift.  But like on Christmas morning as kids we didn’t lie in bed in the morning and wait for the gifts to come to us, we sprinted to the Christmas tree to see what was there. It was our great President Abraham Lincoln who said, “People do what they want to do.”  That is our choice today.  To work hard for the good or let the bad come to us easily.

Reference: Joshua 24:15 (NKJV)