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 3K172: “I Was Just Doing My Job”

“Pay careful attention to your own work, for then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done, and you won’t need to compare yourself to anyone else.”

I was listening to a podcast where the guest was one of the passengers on the flight that Captain Sully Sullenberger safely landed US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River.  I have been fortunate to have met the Captain a few times and even had a lunch with him. I found him to be very humble and very grounded, but it was reinforced to me on this podcast when the passenger thanked him after the flight and Sully just looked at him, shook his hand and said, “I was just doing my job.”  Imagine a world where even the most celebrated among us were to just humbly approach all things as “I was just doing my job”.  That would be some special world.  And, if we could have a company filled with those types of people?  That would be some special company.

Maybe we are at our best when we just focus on doing our own jobs and not getting caught up in the comparison to others of how we are doing, or stacking up. If we can just keep ourselves focused and fixed on the job to be done then it might be that we are respecting the talents that God has given us.  There is nothing to be gained in bragging or building up ourselves. It’s better to just be someone who goes about just doing our jobs.

Reference: Galatians 6:4 (New Living Translation)