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 3K54: The Kudzu Bug

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“The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure.”

At the 1876 World’s Fair a new plant species was introduced as a land cover crop.  It became quite popular for its use in covering man-made hillsides created by railroads and highways that cut into the terrain.  Today, we know it as Kudzu and if you have traveled in the southeast of America it is hard to miss.  Today it is considered an invasive plant (a weed) that hasn’t been able to be killed except by burning it out.  And it grows really fast.  The myths of the South have it growing a foot an hour and it will overnight creep into houses through open windows and doors.  That’s not true, but it makes for great stories as one travels the roads and wonders how will they every get rid of this stuff?  Well, there is a way.  It is is called a Kudzu Bug.  It was first found in the U.S. in 2009.  No one knows how it got to North America but it was found in a garden outside of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport so it likely got here from some shipment on a plane from Asia.  It is quite an effective bug as it bores into the vine and then sucks out the liquid inside, killing the vine.  That’s great for the eradication of Kudzu, which seems to have universal appeal, except for one thing. These little bugs like soybean plants more than Kudzu and have now become an infestation problem for farmers who depend on the crop for their living.  What was once just an eyesore and nuisance has now migrated into a food and existence problem.  What we can learn from Kudzu and the Kudzu Bug is that racing to an obvious answer is not always the right answer.  In fact, it might be the beginning of a bigger problem.

Temptation may be our life’s Kudzu.  It seems to always be there and wanting to grow and creep into all areas of our lives.  And if not checked, it will sneak up and into the very essence of our beings.  I was thinking about the temptations within our work and they are always there ; Cut a corner, take credit for what is not ours to take, round up to our favor, knock down someone who doesn’t deserve it, back out of a meeting or commitment with a fake excuse, drop a rumor to benefit our standing.  The list could go on and on.  We need a deterrent to our temptations and it is our God who tells us that He will not give us more temptation than we can handle, if, and only if, we rely on Him to curb and keep us whole.  Anything else will be only a Kudzu Bug like remedy; causing another problem for ourselves that we don’t need.

Reference: 1 Corinthians 10:13 (New Living Translation)