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 2720: Stories vs. Facts

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“Spouting off before listening to the facts is both shameful and foolish.”

Everyone loves a good story.  Most stories, even fiction, are rooted in some experience or set of events that someone experienced.  The greatest science fiction writers take what they know of today and then build upon that with their imagination that can then be void of facts.  But, somewhere there were facts that might have started the ideas.  And there are stories that are supposed to be true, but because that truth gets stretched or distorted the story becomes something that can’t be counted on or trusted.  We see it all around us now and we wonder what we can do to rid our society of this prevalence.  Well, we are the antidote. Yes, us.  We tell the stories, we repeat the stories, we spread the stories.  And if we tell, repeat or spread stories that we know to be not true, or we doubt their truth, then we become not part of the problem, we are the problem!

So how do we stay grounded in our search for truth.  Terry Looper in his book, Sacred Pace, posits that it starts with what is going on inside of us.  When we are spiritually and emotionally healthy we have a much better chance of recognizing our “biases and blind spots”.  He says, “the more dysfunctional a person is, the more filters they’ll have for interpreting perceived facts to fit their paradigm.  Everybody likes their story; not everybody likes the facts.” This resonates with me as there are times in my life when I allow stress, pressure, or conflicts to distract me from the facts, allowing my unhealthy emotions to conjure up my own set of facts to fit the story I want to tell.  When we do this, we are in dangerous territory of hurting our witness and being perceived as ones who don’t respect or won’t listen to the truth. As in any other vulnerable areas of our lives, we must return to the Lord for setting us straight.  If we ask, He will send us through His Word, Spirit and others to open our eyes to what is the truth we need to accept. And, that truth is what we need to carry forward.

Reference:  Proverbs 18:13 (New Living Translation)