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 2860: Doing Our Homework

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“Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause of orphans. Fight for the rights of widows.”

I am always amazed by the people who enter into conversations with a point of view and then when challenged on “why” they think what they think, there is either hearsay or nothing more than a soundbite to back up their position.  What I find happens next is that because of not having facts or logic to back up the argument that the next response is to tap into emotions to carry forward, which usually devolves into an argument  or worse.  There is a better way.  When one stands on facts, process, and discovery from going deep on a subject, emotion isn’t needed as the default because the facts and truth can stand on its own.  The next time we are about to express our own point of view, let’s check ourselves on whether we have done our homework first.

In the book of Isaiah, the prophet lays out a good process for us to follow as he told us how to live.  It goes this way; Learn and seek.  One done, we can begin to offer help.  Once we have put our knowledge into action through helping, we can legitimately defend what we know and have done.  And when we are confident with a defense, we can be ready to move forward to fight for the cause.  Too many times we do this backwards and start with the fight, which we then end up on the defensive, now needing help instead of able to give it, too late to seek out other ways or methods, with the only learning to be done then is to learn the lesson of not how to go about it the next time. Thus, learning and seeking, our homework if you will, done ahead of any action is what can keep us from getting off on the wrong foot.

Reference:  Isaiah 1:17 (New Living Translation)