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 360: The Joy of Work!

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I have been providing some career counseling this week. Yesterday I found myself talking to someone who is very concerned about what job is going to make her happy as she has been in a job now for three years where she just doesn’t like the work or the people. I tried to remind her that happiness in a job is at the intersection of being where you want to be, doing what you want to do, with the people you want to do it with. In the center of that Venn diagram there is happiness. But even then, that does not guarantee that there will be joy in the work. Joy is a different animal. Joy is defined as “the emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying.” Joy probably doesn’t come from work, but joy can come from doing work. Joy is caused by something that triggers delight and/or happiness. Joy can be found in the process, more than in the result. I was watching that TV show with Ray Romano; “Men of a Certain Age”. When the character Ray plays wins a bet on a basketball game he is happy, but he is not joyful because the way he got to the result is one of his addictions. When we achieve a result at work but it wasn’t gotten there with great teamwork or great process, we are happy but we are not joyful. The Bible tells us how to be joyful in Psalm 119:1; “Joyful are people of integrity, who follow the instructions of the Lord.” If you are missing joy in your work, or your life, then the question needs to be asked if you are working at your highest level of integrity and instruction of how you know you are supposed to work, according to God? A joyful day comes from a high integrity day! As we close off this week, think about today as a day of the highest integrity in all that you do and then measure your joy. I suspect that today could be a great day of joy for you!

Reference: Psalm 119:1 (New Living Testament)