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 141: Weigh Stations

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Where I grew up in Southern Indiana it was standard fare to be on the highways with many 18-wheelers and in some cases the double length ones that when they went by you they seemed to go on and on forever. Of course during bad weather or at night they could be downright scary. The trucking system is part of the backbone of America. Without this industry, the transportation of goods would come to a standstill. Each time I am driving on the interstates with high truck traffic I watch for the weigh stations to see if they are open or not. It doesn’t matter to me with a car, but since being a kid I have been fascinated with the amount of weight that each one of those trailers can hold and the tractors pull. Enough obviously, because we have weigh stations, that they can carry more weight than the road can handle. I also think about the truck driver who has those multiple tons of weight and force behind him/her at all times depending on the power of the engine, the torque of the transmission and the friction of the air brakes for their own personal safety. All of that moving behind the driver is a real and always recognized burden and impending force of danger. In our jobs we all have our own set of weights that are put upon us. The weights show up as an extreme workload, hard to meet deadlines, or co-worker turmoil, etc. Weights that we wish we could pull over to the side of the road, get weighed and have someone make us rest, remove the weight and “take a load off”. I suspect that there are a lot of us who wouldn’t even mind a fine if it forced us to lessen the weight. Easier said than done though isn’t it? Well, God gives us the chance to lean on Him to remove our weights. In Matthew 11:28, Jesus says, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Jesus is our personal weigh station and He will remove those burdens that are weighing us down. All he asks of us is for us to be willing to slow down, pull over and pull up to Him and then let Him start throwing off the tons of stress and worry. Today, before you park your car or walk into the office, take a moment to imagine that you are pulling or stepping up on God’s scales and then give yourself over and let Him remove those weights before you head into the office. The rest will come and you will recognize and feel the lightening of your load.

Reference: Matthew 11:28 (New Living Testament)