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 1005: Conversations – Part 2: Knowing To Whom We Are Talking

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“And he said, Who are you, Lord?”

As many of you know, I recently went through the crash of my hard drive.  This was the first time this had happened to me since I working for someone else and had the entire IT organization at my disposal.  When you sit inside of a large organization and your hard drive crashes, with just one phone call, you come back to your desk a few hours later and you are back up and running on the same hardware or it even becomes a good excuse to upgrade to the latest laptop, etc.  It’s really no big deal.  But, when you are out here on your own, it becomes quite the ordeal.  Fortunately for me the terrific team of my IT consultant Ryan and  DriveSavers rocked it and within 10 days I was back up and running and other than being very expensive and very stressful, I am no worse than I was before.  This time, though and going forward, I am always backed up.  During the trauma days, the DriveSavers team kept me up to date with what was going on and went out of their way to calm and assure me.  In fact, their Customer Support people also carried the title of Data Recovery Counselors.  You see, they know and recognize how when someone is in a moment of crisis, that the answer is in knowing someone better than they know themselves to help them weather the storm.  How many times do we desperately wish for someone to just know us so we can feel that the right thing is going to happen?  When we are in problem resolution mode, 100% of the time.  Our best and deepest conversations with our customers and consumers come when we know them and they know that back.

On the road to Damascus, Saul had heard the voice from the sky and his first reaction and response was to make sure he knew who it was that was calling his name.  But, look closely at his response and see that he didn’t just say, “Why are you?”.  He said, “Who are you, Lord?”.  Saul, knew who it was who was calling him, otherwise he would not have added the word, “Lord”. Instead, what he sought to do, was to find out more before he responded or reacted.  He didn’t probably know he was doing it, but he was doing what we all do when we meet someone for the first time, we deepen the conversation by asking and wanting to know more about who it is we are speaking.  Truly knowing someone is powerful.  Taking the time to know them better, if sincere and without an agenda, usually is well received.  How many times are we going to the extra step, taking the extra moment to just get to know someone a little better?  This is called caring and when we do it, we are setting an example to follow.

Reference: Acts 9:5 (New Kings James Version)