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 2389: Repairing Divots

“Even if that person wrongs you seven times a day and each time turns again and asks forgiveness, you must forgive.”

Last month I got invited to play an exclusive golf course in Nebraska (I don’t get to go until August, but very excited and grateful for the invitation).  As I was talking to the member who extended me the invitation he described the ethos of the membership as those who treat both the staff and the course with respect.  This got us discussing how so much of our work and our companies would be better if we did the same.  We all make mistakes or in the course of our work will leave our mark, which needs to be cleaned up.  On a golf course you repair your divots and ball marks but how often in the workplace do we consider that we need to do the same?  It might be a person who we disrespected or a project that we were late, or a report that we just didn’t give enough time. or effort. Regardless, if we were to go back and do our best to repair our work divots, we would all be that much better.

Repairing our life divots is not only about asking others to forgive us, but even harder is the forgiveness of others.  It’s good golf etiquette to not only repair your own divots and ball marks but also to repair one that someone else left behind.  This a a good lesson for us who play this life for the Kingdom.

Reference: Luke 17:4 (New Living Translation)