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 638: Now (Redux)

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“We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps.”

First published on Day 127 – Friday, April 3, 2009

We just finished the first quarter of the year and started the second. And for sure already in boardrooms and offices across the country companies are making their projections for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th quarters and for the full year. This is how business works. We don’t live in the present. We are always planning and forecasting the future. The future can be exciting and become consuming and we want to get there as fast as we can. Sometimes the future can be bleak and full of expected trouble and we know we have to go there but we go with worry and trepidation. The future can get in the way of living for the present and enjoying and working with the life that we have been given. In C.S. Lewis’ classic book, “The Screwtape Letters”, the devils’ undersecretary named Screwtape explains to his agent and nephew named Wormwood that God doesn’t want us to work and live in the future if it is going to get in the way of glorifying God in the present. Read along as two devils correspond on what we as humans shouldn’t do: “To be sure the Enemy (God) wants men to think of the Future too – just so much as is necessary for now planning the acts of justice or charity which will probably be their duty tomorrow. The duty of planning the morrow’s work is today’s duty; though its material is borrowed from the future, the duty, like all duties, is in the Present. This is now straw splitting. He (God) does not want men to give the Future their hearts, to place their treasures in it. We (the devil) do (does). His (God’s) ideal is a man, who having worked all day for the good of posterity (if that is his vocation), washes his mind of the whole subject, commits the issue to Heaven, and returns at once to the patience or gratitude demanded in the moment that is passing over him. But we (the devil) want a man hag-ridden by the Future…we want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow’s end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present”. We are told in Proverbs that the plans that we have for our future are not in our hands anyway; “We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps.” As we plan our future business and our jobs, we should remind ourselves that the earthly future that overtakes our ability to focus, live and be who are to be in the present is not the future we should be pursuing.

Reference: Proverbs 16:9 (New Living Testament), C.S. Lewis: “The Screwtape Letters”