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 1904: Calendaring

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 “Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.”

I am a calendaring nut.  I watch my calendar closely because how my calendar behaves is usually an indication of how my life is working…or not working.  As well, I can see from my calendar how productive I am being, can be, or won’t be in the coming week, weeks or months. When my calendar allows for thinking time, things seem to work better.  When I am back to back, rescheduling, running over (and apologizing a lot) then I know I am out of control and I need to reset.  I once worked with a very large company CEO who consistently ran hours behind each day, to the point that those who were on his calendar late in the afternoons planned on being rescheduled to another day.  He couldn’t see it and when guided to drop his daily calendar load by 25% to be on time so he could get to every meeting scheduled, his response was, “I don’t have enough time to do what you suggest.”  And so each day, and maybe for the rest of his career as far as I know, he would be scheduled back to back, rescheduling about 25% of the meetings each day to another day.  Only one person controls our calendar (sure, others influence it, but…) and this us.  So, when our calendar gets out of shape it is time for us to shape it up.

I was reminded in church recently, that it is God’s calendar that we need to pay attention to, not our own life timing. As I think about it, God sets His calendar with us right then and right there.  He never says, “I am going to set an appointment with you for next week”.  He speaks to us in the moment and delivers His plan for us, expecting that we not “think about it” but instead act upon what He has for us, in the moment…now. What has God got on His calendar for us that we need to clear our calendars to be able to respond?

Reference: Ecclesiastes 3:11 (New Living Translation)