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 1048: Don’t Look Back

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“Fear not . . . be glad and rejoice: for the Lord will do great things” 

One of the greatest impediments of moving forward is looking back. Sure, we have to use trends and data to be confident and understand where we have come from, but when we spend too much time in the past we can end up never moving forward, or moving in the wrong direction.  A farmer with an ox and plow, or a John Deere tractor knows this lesson all too well.  One look over the shoulder to see where they have hoed and they are now off line going forward.  We are all too quick in business to want to look over our shoulder and either congratulate ourselves for how far we have come or worse yet, get down on ourselves for the lack of progress to date.  We can’t spend our time in the rear-view mirror if we want to move forward boldly and with conviction.  So, gather the analysis needed, review it, make the needed hypothesis and learning and then put it away to move courageously and intently into this New Year.

We are reminded in God’s Word about what happened when Lot’s wife looked back.  We may not turn to a pillar of salt when we look back, but we are in many ways turning our back to God when we decide that we are going to let the past rule our future.  God is in no way a God of yesterday.  He came to give us a forward looking life with glorious promises of the future. When we look backwards we are not believing and trusting in what He can do for us in the coming year, months, days.  So, let’s today, as we complete this first work week of 2013, look only forward and be resolved to making this the best Purposed worKING  year of our lives.

Reference:  Joel 2:21