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 653: The Right Tools

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“If you keep yourself pure, you will be a utensil God can use for His purpose.”

I was speaking with a senior member of an executive team and he was complaining about all of the things that he couldn’t get done with the current amount of resources he had been allocated. As I listened to him describe the challenges he was having I began to see some solutions that could be easily implemented. As I asked about these he said, “that would be great, but I don’t have those systems and software.” I asked why not, since some of these are programs that are available nearly, if not totally, for free. After a fair amount of hemming and hawing I got to the crux of the problem and found that neither he, nor anyone on his team, had explored or sought out any new tools for quite a long time. They had become satisfied with what they had, even though they were deficient, and had gotten used to using antiquated and not the best systems and tools in the marketplace. It was no wonder he and the team were always scrambling to keep up. What I saw was someone trying to compete in the Indianapolis 500 with a car that had technology from ten years ago. This is not unusual and it does take someone in an organization to keep us up to date and then to push us to change and adapt. What is also true is that we if are not using the up to date, and the right tools, that we can not work to our best.

A wonderful thing about our God is that He always wants to work to the best! But, the same can be said in that He also needs the right tools to get His work done effectively. We are God’s tools and utensils who can bring to life His purpose to those around us. But, we also have to be right in order for the best work to get done. Paul writes to Timothy about this and says, “If you keep yourself pure, you will be a utensil God can use for His purpose.” Paul didn’t say that we had to be on the cutting edge, or sophisticated, or fancy. All he said was that we needed to be pure and we would become the right utensils, the right tools, that God could use. Ask yourself today as you go about your work, and God’s work of bring glory to Him, are you pure? Have you done all that you can do today to be the utensil that He wants and needs to get the work done? Another of God’s wonderful gifts to us is that He gives us everything we need to continuously purify ourselves to be ready for the work He asks us to do. From there, the choice is up to us.

Reference: 2 Timothy 2:21 (New Living Testament)