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 2260: Weeding

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“Sensible people keep their eyes glued on wisdom,but a fool’s eyes wander to the ends of the earth.”

I found myself on Saturday pulling weeds and pruning…almost all day long.  I was just going to do a little bit, but once I got into it and could see up close that there were weeds everywhere, well I couldn’t stop after I started.  But, the weeds had been there the day before and the day before that, but why on Saturday, did I finally see all of them?  Well, I think it was because I wanted to see them and not continue to ignore what needed to be done.  The same is about to happen at General Electric as their new CEO steps in.  The Board asked the current CEO to step down after 16 years and the new guy (current CFO) has already signaled that changes are coming. My guess is that the current CFO was ready to do some weeding but a long-time CEO just couldn’t see what needed to be done.  If it can happen to me in the yard, it can happen to any of us, any time in our work.  We need to keep our eyes and minds open to not ignoring the weeds that are likely all around us.

It really is hard for us to keep ourselves focused and paying attention to what is right in front of us.  God challenges us to stay true and glued on the truth, but maybe we have so many “weeds” in our lives right now that it is hard to see through them. What are we ignoring today that we need to prune back or just pull out of our lives so that we can continue to get back focused on what we should?  I noticed something else on Saturday about weeding; you have to get down on your knees to do the real work.  Seems fitting doesn’t it?

Reference: Proverbs 17:24 (New Living Translation)