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 3K116: The Making Of A Friend

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“But I tell you this—though he won’t do it for friendship’s sake, if you keep knocking long enough, he will get up and give you whatever you need because of your shameless persistence.”

Robin Dunbar created the now well-known research that people can only have around 150 friends at one time.  It seems like a big number, and it is especially when you try and narrow down that list to those who are even closer.  That “close” number is usually around 15 people.  What I find fascinating in the research and what Jeffrey Hall from the University of Kansas confirmed is that it takes an investment of time to find what category of friendship one has.  Hall did research with 112 Freshman students and this is what he came up with: “It took about 45 hours of presence in another person’s person’s company to move from acquaintance to friend. To move from casual friend to meaningful friend took another 50 hours over a three month-period, and to to move into the inner close friend circle took another 100 hours.”  That means it takes 195 hours with someone else before we will consider them in our inner circle of close friends.  And then we wonder why we don’t have close friends at work or if we do it is those who it takes years to develop into.  What could we be doing to be sure that our employees get more quality time with each other?  After all, people quit companies, but they don’t quit friends.

195 hours!  If we want to consider God a close friend then we must be hungry to spend that amount of time with him, right?  If our time with God is once a week in church for an hour it will take 3.75 years of Sundays to get to 195 hours.  A daily time of 30 minutes will take 390 devotions and if once a day, still over a year.  What’s my point?  The point is that any friendship we want to develop, we have to really persistently want it and if there is one friendship that is worth it more than all others, it is the friendship we can have with Jesus.

Reference:  Luke 11:8 (New Living Translation)