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 624: Perservance For The Future

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“It was in the midspring, during the fourth year of Solomon’s reign, that he began the construction of the Temple of the Lord. This was 480 years after the people of Israel were delivered from their in the land of Egypt.”

In business, we just can’t think day to day, week to week, month to month, or quarter to quarter. We have to have a long-range vision and plan to execute if we are going to continue to move in a constant and direction. However, this is harder to do than say. Forces are always moving against and toward us to take off of our plan and to deviate from the vision. It’s not easy to stay consistent and to follow through. Most of us would never think of what we do on our job having much, if any, bearing on what the company will be like in 50 years. I have a friend who likes to ask people in their jobs if then can name the person who was in the job before them, and then before them, and then before them. Unless they are CEOs, the line of questioning usually stops at the third generation question. Better yet, ask someone who was the first person in the company to be in the job and they won’t have a clue. We don’t think that long, even though we should. If we did, then we might find that we would make better decisions and investments of our money, resources and time. It’s just not in our DNA to think much further ahead than the lifetimes of our offspring and when we do think about the future it is usually bleak or fatalistic. When did Hollywood create a movie about the future that was not post-apocalyptic? Yet, it is easy for us to make the past look good. To be the best we can be, we need to be able to look into the future and then deal with it for the hope and the optimism that only the future can bring.

Solomon built the Temple from what should have been started 480 years earlier, even though he wasn’t around then. He planned and laid the foundation that nearly 500 years of history would be built upon. He gives an example of what it means to grasp a vision and then stick to it, without waver. Maybe what some of us need to do is start looking a little harder now for the future and then setting a plan to get there. If we decide that that future in our careers and life are to be days, weeks, years and decades that we will invite God to walk along and inside of us then we will find that we can see a bright and exciting future that others will want to follow us towards. The walk we make to the future with conviction and perseverance is a powerful message to others who are looking for a reason to want to see the future. Think today about what that futuristic direction you can begin taking today and will follow through with as Solomon did with the Temple. Start building that future today. Another day of waiting gains nothing.

Reference: 1 Kings 6:1 (New Living Testament)