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 632: Motives

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“He is the one who examines the motives of our heart.”

A fair amount of time is spent trying to figure out what the motives are behind an action or words spoken. Think for a moment about the times we have had to stop and question someones motives and then plan or build a strategy around addressing those motives, which sometimes can be thought of as questionable. In the business press we are constantly reading stories asking about the motives of Boards and CEOs as they make decisions on pay, acquisition, investment, divestment, partnering, etc. Everyone questions motives and too seldom in the workplace are the motives made transparent enough. How much better would our workplaces be if we could count on the motives being pure and never having to worry about the hidden agenda or false motives being used? Alas, it is not to be and reality is that we learn to manage around motive considerations and thus, we waste a lot of time. The best we can do is to be sure that we never play the game and instead ensure that we speak out loud about what our motives are then stay true to them. Those who do this will attract others who do the same and little by little each of us can make it a little better.

To be as pure as we should be we must also always be examining what our own true motives are. While we may say one thing, if we keep asking ourselves, “why” until we run out of answers then we can find true motives and be consistent to those. It is not always easy to get to the bottom of our true, really true, motives because we have to be honest with ourselves and that is not always easy as we don’t always like the truth. It is in these times that we have to not only trust in ourselves but also place our trust in God to ensure that we know what those true motives are. God will be true in His evaluation and provide us with the lens that we need to really see into ourselves. We just need to ask Him and then listen. We may not like what we hear, but that’s okay. Today, ask Him to reveal what the motives of our hearts are and then lean on Him to help you bring those motives in line with your actions and words. God is giving us this gift of transparency, let’s allow Him to do His work on us so that we can be pure and consistent in our work.

Reference: 1 Thessalonians 2:4 (New Living Testament)