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 3K14: Temperature Control

“Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry”

I read an article on how hot air balloons work.  It’s not all that complex.  When you heat the air inside of the balloon to 100 degrees hotter than the air outside of the balloon, the balloon rises.  When you let the air temperature inside fall below 100 degrees of outside air, the balloon lowers.  So, it’s all about temperature control.  And, so are the work discussions we will have today.  Some will stay low temperature…a simmering and nothing will escalate.  But, others have the potential of the temperature rising well beyond what it should and what do we get, a blow up!  So, temperature control is very important.

And yes, we must also manage our own temperature control.  James, who I love his writings, tells us to be slow to to anger.  How do we do that?  Well, if we follow his earlier advice; to be be quick to listen and slow to speak, we are actually controlling the temperature of a conversation and we are keeping the temp below what might cause that blow up that could be far more damaging than we think it could be.  Our internal “thermostats” are not all that great, but with God’s help He can keep us calm, cool and collected, which works out better for everyone.

Reference:  James 1:19 (New Living Translation)