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 2642: The Unpredictable

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“…for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what needs to be said…”

We all know the story of how the Post-It-Notes happened.  It was an unpredictable finding that the glue that wasn’t strong enough could be used for reusable paper sticking.  This week I read a story about an unpredictable set of uses of cars in Japan.  Car sharing in Japan has been around long enough that the daily use of a shared car can be as low as $10/day.  So, for $10/day or $300/month, in Japan the car is getting used in very unpredictable ways that have nothing to do with driving. In fact, the car rental companies are finding that cars are being turned in that hardly moved at all.  You see, for $10/day, the car is being used as a place to take a nap, or as a quiet spot to not be interrupted in the office and for $300/month, the car is a lot cheaper for storage than a storage unit in Japan.  There are reports that cars are being utilized as closets for clothes and shoes, etc.  I believe this as one of the Japanese employees who worked for us at EA used the office cabinets as their closet away from home, as their apartment didn’t have a closet.  Unpredictable uses will always arise, so don’t be surprised when someone suggests that there might be another possibility for your product or service than you imagined.  It could be that the unpredictable is actually the big idea.

God has sent the Holy Spirit to make what we can do for Him seem so unpredictable.  Little do we know what God wants to do with us today.  If we attune ourselves to Him and allow the Holy Spirit to direct and move us in the moment, then what is unpredictable, even to us, can become part of what we do today in our work to bring glory to Him.

Reference: Luke 12:12 (New Living Translation)