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 3K38: The Feynman Technique

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“Then Jesus called to the crowd to come and hear. “Listen,” he said, “and try to understand.”

I recently read an article about the physicist and Nobel Prize winner, Richard Feynman.  While he was accomplished at things that are way over my head, I can grok the Feynman Technique for understanding anything.  It’s pretty simple, if you are committed to learning and truly understanding something. It starts with the belief that if you can’t explain what you are learning to someone else so they can understand it, then you don’t really understand it yourself.  Yes, I am guilty as charged at doing this too.  I think I know something but then try and explain it to someone else only to stumble around and realize that I don’t truly know what I am talking about, even though I thought I did.  This is what I read about the Feynman Technique steps:

  • “Pick a topic you want to understand and start studying it
  • Pretend to teach the topic to a classroom or a child or someone who is unfamiliar with the topic
  • Go back to the resource material when you get stuck (can’t explain it simply enough)
  • Simplify and Organize your thoughts” (and return to Step 2 and repeat until you’ve got it).

Imagine that we would implement The Feynman Technique in the workplace as we try and understand complex issues or new ways of doing things?  Maybe it would be good to ask others to please talk to us as if we were a child.

Jesus spoke to us in Parables to make us have to think deeply and internalize the stories to understand His messages.  He then commanded us to go out and tell others.  And, we are told to stay deep in our learning of the scriptures and to return to the Word over and over.  That sounds like Feynman was onto something for us in our spiritual journeys.  Let’s seek to understand so that we can convey it to those who want to hear the Good News and keep at it until we are the best that we can be for spreading His message.

Reference:  Matthew 15:10 (New Living Translation)