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 1321: Looking Left and Right

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“Peter asked Jesus, “What about him, Lord?” Jesus replied, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? As for you, follow me.”

It’s about this time of the year that I start taking interest in the three-year old thoroughbreds that are racing throughout the country.  I love horse racing because I love the majesty of these beasts who are bred to run and do so with all they have each and every time they are taken to the starting gate.  I used to say that I wanted my company filled with thoroughbreds.  It is a good analogy, but also one that can backfire if taken to the extreme.  Thoroughbreds are great comparators of each other.  From the time they see another, they begin to size them up and the adrenaline starts flowing to see who can outrun the other.  Get them next to each other and it takes a good trainer and jockey to keep them from looking left and right to see who is ahead or behind them.  When this happens they lose focus and can become distracted.  Sounding familiar?  Yes, we do the same in our work.  We start running and then we start looking left and right to compare and see how we are doing.  And, with “big data” there will be more and more of the opportunity to compare.  Looking left and right gets us only one thing; a sore neck.  Sure we need to know where our competition stands and what they are doing, but becoming fixated and obsessed about where we stand in comparison can take us off our game and ironically, make us lose ground.
God doesn’t want us to look left and right.  He asks us to fix our eyes on Him, without distraction or comparison to others. If we have found ourselves in a place of obsession about how we are tracking (titles, salary, material things) versus our peers, then today would be a good day to spend time asking God to take this from us, and instead instill fulfillment and joy in knowing that we are doing our best for Him.  They say Thoroughbreds are a little crazy about what kind of horse they are compared to the others.  We want to run our race well and do so to our best abilities and potential but we don’t want to let ourselves take on the obsessions that can come with comparison. 
Reference: John 21: 21-22 (New Living Translation)