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 545: Becoming Too Attached

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Let’s face it, our jobs are a huge influence over who we think we are and our self-worth and identity. It is common for me to have discussions with people about this as they they think about changing jobs or companies, especially when they have just lost their job or something has changed from a decision that was out of their control. That is when it becomes painfully obvious that we have become too attached to our work as the signature of who we are. Somewhere, along the way, we allow work and our job titles, to become that important to us. In reality, we all allow this to happen and as much as we want it to not be so, it is nearly impossible to separate the “who we are” from “what we do”. So, what do we do so that we don’t fall into the trap of becoming “too” attached? Not only do we ensure that we have many outside of work activities and relationships that can also define us it comes down to an attitude of attachment. We must always monitor this level of attachment to our job, to our company and to our work so that we can answer to ourselves who we would be if tomorrow it was all taken from us. The best advice comes from Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:31, “Those in frequent contact with the things for the world should make good use of them without becoming attached to them, for this world and all it contains will pass away.” This is a good time of the year to evaluate our level of attachment to what we do. Has it gone too far? Does it need to be recalibrated? Is it time to ensure that what we do is not the full definition of who we really are?

Reference: 1 Corinthians 7:31 (New Living Testament)