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 680: The One Big Thing

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

As an output of many strategic planning sessions is the distillation of the business objectives into the “one big thing” that needs to get done before all others. Once a business or an organization can clearly define and articulate what that one big thing is there is a certain clarity and alignment that will appear. But, getting to that one big thing is difficult, really difficult. With all of the competing priorities, getting to the one big thing means letting other things go and many times getting people to give up their pet projects or the areas that they think they must fulfill to move themselves forward. But, this is where we have to be disciplined and focused so that we can see what the one big thing is and not waiver. Organizations that can get there and and stay there are the ones that succeed. Those who try and do too much and become too watered down in their efforts and resources end up never finding the power of focus and alignment.

When King David told his son Solomon that the Temple was to be his to build, he defined for Solomon the one big thing that he was to do. David then challenged him in how he was to get the Temple built and what kind of leader he was to be, but this was all in the pursuit of building the Temple to the best of Solomon’s ability. While in our own lives it may be hard to come to our one big thing, God calls us each and every day to bring glory to Him in all that we do and when we do that to spread His word to others. If we were to take on this as our one big thing, then we could know, without a shadow of a doubt, that the focus of our lives would be fruitful and pleasing to God. Today, consider what has been the one big thing to date? Is it what you want it to be or is today a day to reconsider, realign and refocus?

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