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 681: Seriously

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“So take this seriously. The Lord has chosen you to build a Temple as his sanctuary. Be strong, and do the work.”

By its’ nature, work is serious. While we sometimes work to make it fun, if not taken seriously then work that is done in not serious fashion can do real damage. Without seriousness, the bridge fails, the plane stops flying, the food is undercooked, the room is unclean, the diagnosis is wrong, the presentation is flawed, etc. We have to take work seriously. In fact, those businesses who are able to find a way that all the people who work within the company realize how important, critical and serious the work they do really is and how it fits into a bigger picture, are able to get more productivity and engagement from their people. And, it’s not about being able to say that the work that is being done is changing the world. While that would be nice, and some organizations are working on those types of projects, for most it is about the work that is being done being completed in way that is of the highest quality and standards of excellence. This matters. Serious work matters. Organizations that bring out the best of people and their seriousness to their jobs are doing something right.

When Solomon took over the responsibility to build the Temple, his Father, David, told him, “..Take this seriously”. It was serious work. What this verse tells me is that God’s work is serious and we are to take our responsibility of upholding and building up our part of God’s Temple seriously. Anything in our life that we take seriously, we will find ourselves focused and aligning the rest of our life to accomplish or achieve that goal or task. Those things that we don’t take seriously, or that we take lightly, don’t usually get done and if they do, it’s never as good as it could have been had we put more of ourselves into it. God asks us to live a life that reinforces Him to others as us being examples of what it means to follow and love the Lord. Is there anything that could be more serious? God calls us to a great and abundant life in following Him, but with that comes us taking it seriously.

Reference: 1 Chronicles 28:10 (New Living Testament)