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 773: Do The Right Thing – Part 5: Focus

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“Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world.

Every day in the workplace a set of choices are made and if those choices are being made about the right things and in the right way, then the matter of focus is being considered. In actuality there seldom is a shortage of things that can be done, or ideas that could be pursued. The harder part is choosing which things to not pursue or chase and having the courage and determination to say no. It’s not easy and many a business, especially many start-ups that I have seen end up imploding under the weight of doing too much or reaching too far ahead of themselves. Having a strategic focus to hang onto that acts as a filter for decisions can make the exercise of saying no easier and more palatable. We may never know which opportunities we missed, but if we are focused we can know which opportunities we can achieve.

In our own lives, the same set of choices must be made. Fortunately, we have been given God’s Word and His spirit to guide us. But, still we can lose focus and if not careful wake up one day finding many other priorities in our lives that we have put in front of our relationship with the Lord. And, those higher priorities can even be healthful and good things, but still they shouldn’t be at the top. It comes down to how focused we can remain and how fixed we can have our hearts on Jesus. None of us are alone in this struggle and challenge. The question we should be asking today of ourselves, is really, at the core, where is our focus? If we can’t say that it is on Him and that all else flows from there, then we need to rethink what we are doing. Today, let’s think hard on this and let God speak to us about the areas where we put things above Him and how we can realign.

Reference: 1 John 2:15-16 (New Living Testament)