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 437: The Big Rocks

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Our career paths are ones that are not paved, smooth or straight. It just doesn’t work that way. Instead the path goes up and down, it has crevices, it produces small stones that get in our shoes, it curves and winds, and sometimes it looks nearly impassable. All kinds of things get in the way of what you’d think would be a clear pathway, but instead the way in front of us looks more like an obstacle course. The frustrating parts are those big rocks that seem immovable. They show up in the forms of bosses who we can’t get support, senior management who won’t give us the resources or the financing to get done what needs to get done, the co-worker who is just impossible to work with, the relocation that just can’t happen because of the cost of living difference, and on and on. Big huge rocks that can’t be gotten around or gotten over. At that point we either want to give up or just settle on the way things are now. But, we don’t have to do that. We just need to figure out how to move those big rocks to get around them. Ever think that we might be able to split the rocks in front of us so that we could walk right through? How wonderful would that be? The answer is yes, we can of we have the faith to do so. Moses and the Israelites were beyond hope when God had Moses strike a rock and as we read in Psalm 105:41, “He split open a rock, and water gushed out…” Sometimes in our careers we are up against the rock and we have been at it for so long that we are tired and thirsty. We want to give up and turn around and go back the way we came. This is when God wants us to call upon Him. Actually, He wanted us to call upon Him to guide us on our career path a long time ago, but even now when it looks there is no place else to go He wants us to look to Him to split the rock for us and open up the path. How often do we take our career path to God? We should each day and ask Him to walk in front of us so that we can follow. What looks like big rocks to us are nothing but small pebbles or nothing at all to Him. Today, let’s get Him back on the path with and in front of us.

Reference: Psalm 105:41 (New Living Testament)