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 295: The Main Thing…

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I was in meetings yesterday with a very talented and accomplished business entrepreneur who runs a very successful company. He also happens to be a strong believer and leads his company with God-driven and faith-filled principles. As we were talking he referenced a few times a quote that he had heard a long time ago, that was later said now broadly attributed to Stephen Covey; “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing”. What a simple concept, but such a hard thing to do. What I noticed about when this CEO would say this was that he was talking out load to himself as much as he was talking to me and the other people in the room. This simple statement is not only a philosophical statement, it is also a constant priority reminder and gut check on ensuring that you are doing the right thing first, the right thing most and the right thing for the right reasons. It is a natural tendency to drift in our work. There are so many different priorities that are put to us daily. There are the priorities that come from our boss, those that come from our peers, those that come from our customers and those that are our own priorities that we want to do ourselves. So the main thing can drift and the main thing can get out of focus and the main thing can slip down the list into one of the other things. So, not only do we need to know what the main thing is, we may have to say it out loud to ourselves a few times a day, to remind ourselves what that main thing is and to keep that main thing, the main thing. As believers God also tells us through His word what is our main thing. He says in Proverbs 4:25; “Look straight ahead, and fix your eyes on what lies before you.” God is saying to us, don’t let yourself waiver or become unfocused, just keep the main thing, the main thing. And we know what that main thing is as we bring our purpose to our work. Our main thing is to bring glory to God in all that we do. Today, remind yourself of the main thing and see if you can keep it the main thing all this day and don’t hesitate to say out loud a few times as a reminder, “the main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing”.

Reference: Proverbs 4:25 (New Living Testament)