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 451: Breaking Point

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We all have a breaking point when we are just not going to be able to take it anymore. Anyone who has ever been there knows what it feels like and knows that in those final days or hours working up to the break, that all kinds of bad things start to come out. We also work with people who we know are at their own breaking point or melt-down stage and if we don’t reach out and help them then they are likely to go over the edge and we aren’t going to be able to rescue them back. It sounds so severe, but it is not in the sense that when we are pushed hard in our jobs then we are vulnerable to making some mistakes that could have a life-long impact. One wrong word even could be enough to damage credibility or a relationship so severely that there is no return and no taking it back. To lose a job or lose a friend is just not worth it. So, we need to be able to identify for ourselves the danger signs as well as be sure that we can identify the signs of impending break down in us or our co-workers. Recently, reading the behaviors of what people will be like in the final days before Jesus returns, made me think that the list of characteristics also sound very familiar to the actions and attitude of one who reaching their breaking point. Let’s take notice of what we read in 2 Timothy 3:1-4; “But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.” I can think through the list of people I know who have been broken and then crashed and burned in their work and personal life. Had I paid more attention to this list of characteristics might I have been able to have reached out and helped? Today, think of others and also take stock of yourself, and be sure that neither your co-workers or yourself are beginning to show the signs of the final days before hitting the breaking point. If so, then it is time to intervene and ask God to take back over, ASAP. God does not want us to find our breaking point without Him there to help us overcome and get it all back together.

Reference: 2 Timothy 3:1-4