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 741: Life After Work?

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“Jesus told her, I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying.”

Everyday, in every business, someone asks themselves, “Is there life after this place?”. It’s a question grounded in how hard they are working, what they are sacrificing and have already sacrificed for their job, and how much of themselves that they have put into the job or the company. It’s really an irrational question because rationally we all know of course there is life after a job, but at the time it’s really hard to see and therefore we can get in a real funk as one thing after another gets under our skin, pushing us to a breaking point. Who in the business is watching for the boiling point? Is it s manager? Is it an HR person? Is it a peer? Maybe all and more often none. It is hard to see the pain of others if the pain is resident within ourselves too. Today’s business climate has us all stretched to a max, doing much more with much less than ever in our work history. Our staffs are fighting above their weight to be productive and keep the bottom line looking good in the face of uncertain revenue. And with all of this, it is not shameful to be asking is there life after this?

In the largest perspective, of course there is life after all of this, if only we will believe and look forward. While we each need and should want to give our best to our work; because to not do so would be to turn our heads on the talents given to us, we should also always remember that we are only passing through. I equate many times how we work to a marathon running race. It takes a long time of training to get ready and then it takes a long time to run the race and it takes a long time to recover. There is a metaphor for our careers in there. What we know with 100% certainty is that that there is real life after work and eternal life after death. As we close this work week, when was the last time we took just a few minutes and dreamed about what that future will look like for us? If that doesn’t lift our spirits and provide perspective then nothing will. We are promised eternal life and what an eternity it will be. It’s a life after that I am looking very much forward to seeing.

Reference: John 11:25 (NLT)