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 2846: Who We Listen To…

But Rehoboam rejected the advice of the older men and instead asked the opinion of the young men who had grown up with him and were now his advisers.”

Not all advice and counsel is good advice and counsel.  There are no shortages of voices who want to tell us how to think and what to do.  And it really comes down to us, to discern who we should listen to and who we shouldn’t. The best approach might be to never depend on just one set of advice but instead always seek out a wide array of opinions and put them all into the consideration set.

Solomon’s son Rehoboam did the right thing by seeking out advice and counsel.  He even had found the right counsel but decided to not receive it and instead took the wrong advice.  We have to wonder why he would do so. Well, we know from the scriptures that he was destined to fail because of Solomon’s failings (see yesterday’s post) but I also read in this account that Rehoboam sought out the advice and counsel of those who are more like him and accepted that (from the young like he was) versus the advice from those different (older).  And that is potentially the lesson for us; let’s be careful of only seeking out those who we know will give us the advice we want to hear or lean to who we are already and our own inclinations and positions, but instead not form an opinion, position or decision until we give strong consideration to those whom are different than who we are and what they have to say.

Reference: 1 Kings 12:8 (New Living Translation)