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 1922: Strategy

“No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it,but I focus on this one thing…”

We talk strategy all the time.  Yet, we have a very hard time nailing down what is our actual strategy.  We can create lots of goals and activity, but unless those tie back to an understandable strategy, then we might end up having people work on anything and little to what we need to be focusing.  It’s actually hard to sit, decide and lock down our strategy.  What it means is not only what is moving forward, but also knowing and defending what we are not doing. It’s always harder to say no than yes and it’s the strategy keeps us honest.  We are coming towards the middle of the year, which is the best time to reexamine and reaffirm strategy before we go into annual financial planning in the Fall season.

As believers, trying to work to God’s glory as our purpose, we are fortunate that God has only one strategy that we are to follow.  It’s a strategy where we don’t have to guess.  All He asks us to do is to follow Him.  Unlike the ways of the world we shouldn’t argue or fight against the strategy.  We are to step in line with Him and align all that we do. If we are wondering or wandering, then all we have to do is return to God’s strategy document (and we know what book that is).

Reference: Philippians 3:13 (New Living Translation)