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 922: “I Want..”

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“The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want…”

In consultation with a good friend who is a senior executive of a large company he was recounting about an employee who approached him wanting to to be transferred to a new job after having only been in the position for a year.  This employee said to him, “I want a new job that is going to challenge me”.  My friend asked his employee what about their current role did they not find challenging as according to him this employee was only doing a good job and and was meeting some, but not all of their objectives and therefore had not yet earned an above target or great rating.  The response from the employee was without substance or rationale other than there was a “want” to do something different.  What my friend saw was an employee who had their success standards at the wrong level. The employee defined their success as having done the job.  The boss defined success as mastering the work and exceeding expectations.  As you can imagine, it was not a fruitful conversation and ended with the employee not getting their “want” fulfilled.  How often we end up in these conversations where the “wants” are mismatched and no one walks away happy or satisfied.  How might we turn the conversation around to not what “I want” but instead, what “others want” to see if we can’t find how best to meet everyone’s needs.

How can we “want” when all has been given to us that we need?  David’s most well-known Psalm starts with teaching us that when we have the almighty shepherd that we shouldn’t have any wants. The danger of a want is that we mix it up with our needs and then we miss God’s blessing.  What is it that we could sit and write down and define as the difference in our wants and needs.  We would be well served to know the difference so that we don’t end up one of those people at work and home who is all about our “wants”.

Reference: Psalm 23:1