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 499: Goals That Carry Us Forward

Goal setting is just part of work. If we don’t have goals and objectives that we strive to achieve then we will end up standing still and the rest of the world will pass us by. We have to have goals to know where we are going and to also mark milestones of what we have accomplished. Goals can be those big hairy audacious ones that they talk about in the book “Built to Last”, or they can be small goals that give us sense of forward movement and accumulated with other goals end up completing something big and important. Regardless, we have to have goals. Goals also can carry us through the hard or confusing times when we are not getting clear direction from our boss. We can use them as clarifying tools to go back to those we work for and say, “I am doing this, is this right or wrong for me to try and accomplish?”. Too many times we wait for others to set our goals for us. We should instead be always reevaluating and setting new goals for ourselves so that we are always strengthening and getting better. I was just reading the book of Job. Each time I read this book in the Old Testament I pray a prayer of thanks for not every having been tested like Job. Early in Job’s account he says in Chapter 6, verse 11: “But I do not have the strength to endure. I do not have a goal that encourages me to carry on.” Job describes goals as not only a positive but also as a way to work around the negatives in our life. When faced with adversity, trouble or perceived calamity, we can set goals that help carry us forward. What goals have you set for your yourself for the rest of this year, this coming month, this week or today? Without goals we will not move forward. Let us find the goals that we know will carry us forward to work for God’s glory.

Reference: Job 6:11 (New Living Testament)