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 688: Acceptance: Part 3 – Thorns

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“The good soil represents the hearts of those who truly accept God’s message and produce a huge harvest – thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times as much as has been planted.”

New talent has been hired, oriented and starting in their new job. Everyone is really excited and accepting. The employee gets going and everything is good until they start to get into the thick of it with their co-workers. On the surface the team looks accepting and welcoming, but once the work starts to get done, the thorns of politics start to come out. All of a sudden, everywhere the employee turns it feels like they are getting stuck and before long they are so deep into the thorns that it feels choking and constricting. They go home and ask themselves, “Why am I doing this to myself?” After months of this, they either give up or we don’t want to hear what they are telling us about the politics, the back-biting, the hidden agendas, etc. and we label them as a misfit and malcontent, and we let them go. Meanwhile the thorn bushes have found another victim and once they have some open space, they insidiously grow into each other, making it even harder for the next person coming in. Thorns of politics and bad behavior are hard to see from the surface so we have to be willing to go in and do the dirty work of removing them at the root. If we don’t then new talent will never be accepted and we won’t ever let any of the new talent to come in and take real root.

Jesus’ message comes to us and we let Him in and then we let the busy nature of our lives, our other interests and commitments, our other influences to, like thorns, squeeze Him out until His message is choked and can never grow in our lives. If we really think about it, any new aspect of our lives whether it be a new relationship or a new activity or interest must have to room to take hold and grow into us otherwise all of the other things and people in our lives will push it out. Our acceptance of God is the same way. We have to make room for Him in our lives or He can never take root and grow within us. It’s really nasty work removing those thorn bushes and it demands the courage and resistance to pain to get in there and take them out at the root. But, if we don’t then there will never be room for Him. Let’s not let the thorn bushes in our lives be the reason why we have an acceptance problem.

Reference: Matthew 13: 1-23 (New Living Testament)