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 595: Happy Is

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Let’s face it, being happy at work and happy in our work comes and goes. Sure, there are times of stretched happiness but there are also times when we are not happy with what we are doing, or where we are doing it, or with whom we are doing it with. At these times we can get in a funk and and we can let our emotions get the best of us and if we are not careful we can spiral into forgetting the things that we really like about our jobs, our co-workers, and our company. So, how do we ensure that we are receiving the fullest happiness from our work? The answer lies not in what we do, but instead in how we do it. Haven’t we all marveled at some point or another about the person who is so happy doing the most menial of jobs? And if we are honest with ourselves we have probably wished for a bit of that simplicity and a lot of that happiness. What we are really amazed by is the happiness that can come from “how” we do the work, regardless of what that work is or will be. If we were to return to the days of when we first started to work and think about how each and every day was filled with something new to learn and something new to master then we would remember that it really was about how we did those jobs not what those jobs were. David gives us a peek into what can bring happiness to how we work and conduct ourselves. In Psalm 119 he says, “Happy are people of integrity, who follow the law of the Lord.” Happy is living, and therefore working, with integrity that supersedes all of the office politics, or the career missteps, or the bad boss, or the failing company. Happy is knowing that what we do, we do with the highest of integrity and in a way that models and is an example to others. Think today about where in your work you can up your integrity in “how” you are working. What you will find is that when you do that your happiness, about your work, can only increase.

Reference: Psalm 119:1 (New Living Testament)