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 3K101: Quick And Dirty Or Lengthy And Thorough

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“Then call on me when you are in trouble, and I will rescue you, and you will give me glory.”

Solutions for problems to be solved can come in many forms.  Is it a “Quick and Dirty” solution?  These are the easy fixes that just take an intentional amount of time and energy and we can put the problem behind us.  But, there is danger here if we misread the situation and go quick and dirty and that only band-aids the problem, not solving it for good, leaving the problem to arise again.  And then there are the problems that demand “Lengthy and Thorough” work.  This is typically work that takes resources and time that must be prioritized away from others.  It’s exciting when the work is done and we feel the accomplishment, knowing that we have cemented in a long-term fix.  The watch out here is that we can, because of that deep feeling of accomplishment and a familiar routine we can fall into, begin to apply lengthy and thorough to more than we really need.  So, there is a place and time for both solutions, but it’s important that we do the diligence to recognize the difference. Once we get good at this discernment, it will feel like we are getting way more done than we thought capable.

I think there are times in our faith journey that we can get mixed up with how God wants to work through us.  There have been times in my like that I looked for the “quick” solution, when what God really wanted me to do was to dig in and give Him a lengthy and thorough amount of work on me.  And, conversely, there have been times when I have become paralyzed not wanting to do the long work, when He was actually just calling me to action now and to realize that what I was facing was not that big of a deal after all.  In either case, He will direct us if we listen closely to what He is trying to say to us. And, either way, if we do surrender and engage with Him today, He will make it clear to us what we really need.

Reference: Psalm 50:15 (New Living Translation)