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 2017: Time To Plan

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“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”

This is the week that we likely wrap up the year and probably Wednesday we pack it in and take off the rest of the week for Christmas break and if we do work the following week between Christmas and New Years it’s more about getting ready for next year than closing off 2015.  So, what kind of planning will we do?  How much thinking time will we give ourselves to plan for the new year?  This is where Ben Franklin’s quote comes into play – “If I’d had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter”.  What good old Ben was saying is that it takes time to distill and focus a thought.  This is key because if we take on our planning of the new year without true thinking time we will likely end up with a long list that is more of a glorified to-do list, which might be called resolutions, but never get completed.  Each year, Facebook Founder/CEO, Mark Zuckerberg comes up with one annual improvement goal, and because he focuses, he completes them.  Fast Company Magazine detailed Zuckerberg’s last six year of goals:

  • 2009 – Wear a tie every day
  • 2010 – Learn Mandarin
  • 2011 – Only eat animals, he kills himself
  • 2012 – Code every day
  • 2013 – Meet a new person every day who doesn’t work at Facebook
  • 2014 – Write at least one thank-you note every day
  • 2015 – Read a new book every two weeks

Will be fun to see what he comes up with for 2016.

There is something to learn from finding the focus on the one and let everything else flow from there.

How will we improve our faith walk in 2016?  Now would be the time to start praying and thinking about it so that as we roll into the New Year (which will be before we know it), we are committed.

Reference:  Jeremiah 29:11 (New Living Translation)