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 952: Non-Trivial Pursuits

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“Whoever pursues righteousness and unfailing love will find life, righteousness, and honor.”

If you have ever worked with a software engineer or a Chief Technology Officer you will hear somewhere along the way, “This is non-trivial”.  That statement is their way of saying, “This is hard, complicated and could get in the way of other things if you really want to pursue it.”  There are many things in business that are non-trivial and must be pursued.  The art is in knowing which is which and what to pursue when.  I am always amazed and a little taken back when I hear someone say, “we need more ideas”.  Idea shortage is typically never the problem. The problem is ferreting out the right ideas and being honest enough with ourselves to say no to the bad and non-value added ones. Trivial Pursuit, while a fun family game, is not a good business strategy and must be guarded against vigorously.  We need only pursue that which is going to make the most difference and move the needle most significantly and then remove all of the rest of the trivial.  It is, as I said, an “art” but it also demands the discipline of science for it to happen consistently and reliably within a business.

We are the same.  As human beings we love to pursue the trivial.  The hours we each have are all the same and it is in how and what we pursue that we get our returns. Solomon tells us what to pursue and what we get in return.  What greater promise is there to find life and a life that is filled with righteousness and honor?  Let’s today take a moment and ask ourselves, “What are we pursing today?”  The follow up question then needs to be, “And, what is is trivial and what is non-trivial?”  Let’s pursue the path of righteousness and be sure that it is in this pursuit that we focus on the non-trivial that really matters.

Reference: Proverbs 21:21 (New Living Translation)