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 572: Seriously

The adage is, “let’s not take ourselves too seriously”. For the most part that is correct as the minute we start to take ourselves too seriously we can come to find out that no one takes us nearly as seriously as we do and that is a real let down. I have known many an executive who must get up in the morning and look in the mirror and say to themselves that no one is more important than the face looking back at them. Why do I think this, because they bring that attitude to work and it is really annoying to everyone else. So, if we are taking ourselves too seriously, we should drop the act and recognize that we all put our pants on the same way each day. That said, there are areas where we should be seriously serious. I was with a friend recently who was telling me about someone he hired whose most recent employment had been terminated because he passed, what he thought and perceived at the time as innocent, an email joke along to members of his team. Three days later he was fired and removed from a very good job that he needed. On reflection, and in the interview with my friend he said he, “just had taken it seriously enough”. Part of being serious when we need to be is in the understanding that we are setting and throwing off an example each and every day, hour, and minute. If we don’t listen to that voice down inside of ourselves that is telling us, “this is a time to be serious” and stop playing games, we can get ourselves in serious trouble and let a lot of people down. As believers we get great teaching from the Word, our prayer time and where we worship. But we need to take that teaching and carry it into our jobs as much as anywhere else in our lives. We read clearly of this in Titus, “And you yourself must be an example to them by doing good works of every kind. Let everything you do reflect the integrity and seriousness of your teaching.” Today, let us evaluate and reevaluate where in our lives we should rightly be a little more serious in who we are.

Reference: Titus 2:7 (New Living Testament)