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 369: Stop the Complaining!

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I like to answer the question, “How are you doing?” with “I have no complaints and if I did I wouldn’t say them anyway as they just reinforce the problem to myself”. Some people are just complainers. I think they wake up in the morning and start complaining about gravity that gets in their way of getting out of bed and from there they just snowball complaints down hill all day long. The problem with complaining is that it invites more complaints and like that snowball, all kinds of people get rolled into it and before long everyone is complaining. I don’t like to be around complainers as they suck the energy out of me. Lots of times, I will just find my way out of the conversation so I don’t get dragged into the fray. It’s obvious from all that we are taught that we are not to be complainers. But, I know that it is really hard to see the positive side first and keep the complaints holstered. There are so many easy targets in work that we could spend all day long complaining. There’s the boss, the office chair, the cafeteria food, the pay, the benefits, the lazy co-worker, the bad customer, the economy, the government….do I need to go on? But, we are to be above all of this and do our best to not be complainers. When Jesus was being taunted and questioned by the people in John Chapter 6:43 about whether or not he was the Son of God, He said to them; “Stop complaining about what I said”. I like that he chose the word complaining because he heard the people chastising and characterizing Him as the son of Joseph, instead of realizing and accepting Him for who He was. Jesus saw us in that verse when we stand around in disbelief or when we don’t know the truth so instead we start complaining. He said, “Stop the complaining”. We can take that lesson and put it to work today at out our work and in our lives outside of work. Try and catch yourself today before you complain and if you can, then ask, “Why do I need to complain about this and what good does it do if I do complain?” The answer will be clear. There is no good reason to complain and nothing good will come from it anyway.

Reference: John 6:43 (New Living Testament)