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 886: Fundamentals Matter

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“Unless you are faithful in small matter, you won’t be faithful in large ones.”

I was having a conversation with a dear friend and very successful senior executive who is reaching the end of his career.  Upon a moment of reflection about his career arc, he pointed out that a turning point for him was when he realized what he was really good at and realized that it was time to forget everything else and focus just there.  He went on to say that it was then that he began to see his job differently, and like finding a higher level of definition, he could see that his job and what he was really good at, was all about the fundamentals and ensuring that they happen flawlessly, over and over, each and every time.  He sounded like a great sports coach.  The great ones know how to see the game and break it down to the basics and the fundamentals and then build a team from those, long before offense, defense and strategy show up. The fundamentals matter and it’s interesting to me that it is with age, experience and wisdom that they can come into clearer view.

The same is so true in our spiritual journey and walk.  Jesus tells us so as he more than once reminds us of the small things, the fundamentals if you were, that must be believed, followed and exercised.  If we are to live the full and abundant life that He has given us then we must pay attention to the fundamentals.  And certainly, if we are to work to our purpose of bringing glory to God in all that we do, we have to follow and exercise those fundamentals as faithfully as we can.  Today, let’s do a check-in and see how we are doing on the fundamentals and being faithful to the small matters.

Reference: Matthew 16:10 (New Living Testament)