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 1466: Staying Clearheaded

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“But let us who live in the light be clearheaded, protected by the armor of faith and love, and wearing as our helmet the confidence of our salvation.”

The last few years have been filled with numerous acquisitions and I suspect there are more to come.  Acquisitions don’t come without risk. In fact, many just don’t end up working and the acquired teams end up leaving after whatever agreement that was put in place, expires. And when those acquisitions go really bad they can hang around to haunt a company for years.  Just ask HP, which has had a number of them go sour and still are working on having their credibility returned.  We can get intoxicated with the desire to acquire and the clearheaded are needed to keep us grounded and questioning before we move.  The same can be said for projects or new ideas that come to us.  We can’t just always jump in. We need to keep ourselves steady and able to discern what we should and shouldn’t make a move to do.

We are commanded to remain clearheaded and to stay faithful and confident in our belief.  Yet, that is not as easy as it sounds. We are surrounded by ways to lose being clearheaded.  There are the obvious and then the not so obvious.  Our minds can get cluttered with the wrong things and we may not even realize it is happening.  I find personally that I must stay filled with what God’s provisions or easily run the risk of losing the clarity of mind that is required.  Today there will be conversations, activities and choices that will take away from keeping our heads clear.  Let’s steer ourselves toward those things that God desires.

Reference: 1 Thessalonians 5:8 (New Living Translation)