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 233: Form

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I was out running yesterday and at mile 5 of my usual 6 mile run I found myself tiring for no apparent reason. As I tried to analyze what was going on, I realized that for the last few miles my mind had drifted and I was getting sloppy with my form and that was what was making me tired. I tried to clear my head, concentrate on my form, and return my body to the upright posture and lean forward position that I know holds me together and strong for many miles. As I did that, I could almost immediately feel myself strengthening and I went on to finish the run feeling stronger and better than I did at mile 5. What does this have to do with purposed worKING? Much, and in fact it what Purposed worKING is about. Work and our jobs try and give us a form to follow and unfortunately it is not always the form that God spells out for us in His word. Paul talks about how important it is to run the race well and finish strong. He says in 1 Corinthians 9:26; “So I run straight to the goal with purpose in every step” Without the right form and concentration the run is never run well and finished strongly. Our work is a career marathon and with each day that we lose our form and get sloppy we run the risk of not finishing with the strength that God expects from us. Malcolm Gladwell recently wrote about the pitfalls of hubris (being overly proud and arrogant) and one of the things he said was that many times hubris comes from lots of experience on the job and tenure in a position. We become overly confident in ourselves and before long we become prideful and arrogant about what we can do versus others. As this happens, we, in God’s eyes and others around us, lose our form. The great thing is that we can with God’s help course correct ourselves, right now, today, when our form slips. It may be that today you know that you have not been the person you should be at work to others. You know that you have become prideful and defensive of your work versus others as you share less with others and look for credit from the boss. Or, it may be that you find yourself looking at others around you and instead of thinking how you can build them up, you are seeing them as competition and that is shaping how you interact and communicate with them. Whatever the circumstances, if you feel as though you are losing form, then now is the time to make the correction. God’s Word is full of those corrections and that is what we also try and provide here at Purposed worKING as well. The prayer for each of today should be that we can all find the form that God desires for each of us.

Reference: I Corinthians 9:26 (New Living Testament)