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 2371 Appreciation of Circumstances

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“Know the state of your flocks, and put your heart into caring for your herds…”

A CEO/Founder I have gotten to know just went through a terrible experience.  No, it has nothing to do with his business, but it does have to do totally with his work.  His wife had a freak accident and seriously broke one of her legs. If we stop for a moment and think what would happen to us if we broke a leg and had to go through all that comes with enduring the hardship, pain, healing, patience, surrendering of ourselves to someone else for care and support, work and financial impact, inconvenience to others, etc., then we could empathize (maybe even sympathize) with my friend.  He is a good-natured guy and has done his best to be positive throughout the ordeal, but he does admit that he was set back as his priorities and time allocations were abruptly changed in one moment.  He also makes the observation that he never really considered what it was like to break a leg or be severely diminished in capability until his wife went through the experience.  He says that now when he sees or hears of anyone breaking their leg, that it immediately takes him to a place of caring and wanting to help.  And, isn’t that like most of us?  We just can’t feel another’s pain until it happens to us or someone close to us. It happens in business frequently. We don’t think a competitor could do such a thing, until they do.  We can’t feel the pain of losing a key employee until we watch them pack up for their last day. We see someone else lose their funding and close their doors and then we begin to think about what we need to do to not have the same happen to us.  We really need to pay more attention to those with broken legs.

In the verse above it feels like King Solomon is speaking directly to any of us who shepherd or lead people.  We just have to know how our flocks are doing, what they are going through, their aspirations, their dreams, their failures, their struggles, their fears, etc.  You see, we are to go further than just waiting to recognize what others are experiencing.  We have to care enough to go find out, to learn, to dig in and to be willing and ready to do what we have to do to show our support and care.  That is what Jesus modeled for us.  You see, He was the only one to reside on the Earth who could really feel everything that we go through and that is because He was willing to walk in our shoes. We have to evaluate ourselves on how much are we really appreciating the circumstances of others?

Reference: Proverbs 27:23 (New Living Translation)