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 2652: Hot Takes

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“When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division,  envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!”

The New York Times describes a “Hot Take” as a “hastily assembled but perhaps heartfelt piece of incendiary opinionated content.”  And there you have it.  Part of the big problem we have with the news.  We are drawn more to the “Hot Takes” than we are to the thorough and the complete thinking and opinion. If you don’t believe that this is the case, then open your phone to the News app and see what you get.  Scroll and find one “Hot Take” after another.  The problem with this is not just the news.  It is also that this approach of off the cuff opinions to incite or excite others has become our way of writing (and communicating) in today’s world.  It is not healthy, but it is what we have.  The question is this.  Do we play along and feed this approach by clicking and reading, by retweeting or sharing, by looking for our own five word headline to start a stir?  Or, do we simply….control ourselves and resist?

We have seen those who have tried to use the “hot take” route to share their faith.  They make incendiary statements and shout at us in written or verbal approaches.  Does it work?  None of us will really know until we see the souls in heaven who came to the Lord through this approach.  But, I know this.  We are given the Fruits of the Spirit to aspire to model and we are also given the not so good fruits of the spirit to not be like.  We sometimes forget to read the verse right before the one we like to use the most. Check it out and then let’s check our “hot takes” against that litmus test.

Reference:  Galatians 5:19-23 (New Living Translation)