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 2420: Extra Baggage

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“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up.”

I read that every day of the year there are 7000 items from suitcases that are added to the inventory of the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, Alabama. That’s a lot of lost baggage and each item represents some level of regret. The article got me thinking about how in each of our companies we carry lots of extra baggage that we should always be trying to shed, without regrets.  The first to go needs to be the stories of the past that are damaging and/or confusing about the culture of the company. Do we know what those stories are?  We probably don’t, but they are being told and that extra baggage is hanging around and weighing us down. As we enter the summer it might be a good time to do some checking around to see where that extra baggage is being stored and see if we can’t, with the replacement of old stories with the newer and better ones, lose the extra baggage once and for all.

God offers us a continuous opportunity to shed the baggage that we create for ourselves and then carry around with us.  Sin, doubts, fears, misgivings, grudges, etc. all start to weigh us down.  And our workplaces can many times feel like the Baggage Center that just keeps collecting more and more, every day.  God can help us step in front of that conveyor belt, but we need to let Him do so in us. Let’s take the opportunity today to see if we can’t shed a little of that extra baggage.

Reference:  Hebrews 12:1 (New Living Translation)