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 3K28: Bump And Run

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“No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

In golf there is a shot called the “bump and run”.  This starts with picking a club as you are attempting to approach the ball to the green.  It could be any club really but usually not a wedge or a putter, and instead of trying to  fly the ball to the hoe, you give the ball a bump expecting it to jump off of the club, land some distance in front of you and then roll out to an equal or greater distance than the distance of the bump.  It’s a shot of finesse and feel as the factors of the terrain of where the ball will land and what happens then and also how the ball will roll upon the ground while it is running can be unpredictable.  When executed effectively though its a great play and a great feeling.  And, it looks easier said than done.  It reminds me of a lot of our work.  We know how to tackle large projects with teams assigned and defined work flow and measurable outcomes.  We also know how to knock off the daily tasks that are routine and we almost can complete them in our sleep.  It’s the work in between that takes some unknown amount of thinking and creation time, but can be done probably in a few hours or a half day or so, if we only put our minds to it and set time aside.  And when we do, we put our own spin on the task using what resources we have and we finesse it across the finish line.  When we are done we can find ourselves feeling great satisfaction and momentum to work on the next job.  When this happens, we just completed a work “bump and run”.

An upcoming guest on the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast was describing to us (the hosts) his interactions with God.  He calls it “bumping into Jesus”.   It got me thinking about that because I know that feeling.  What we all should know is that God is always with us and it is only us that creates distance from Him.  So, many times when we have drifted or just have Him out of mind, we will find ourselves in a situation where we feel the change, as if we are bumping into Him and when we do we feel close again, revived and energized to continue on.  Or, as Paul says, to run the race.  You see where I am going?

Who knew that God created for us today His version of “the bump and run”?  Let’s take that shot today!

Reference:  Romans 8:39 (New Living Translation)