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 184: Time For More?

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You’ve been in your job for awhile now. You know what you are doing. You are good at what you do. When assigned a project or task you nail it and do a great job. As you look at what you are capable, you believe you can take on more, and more importantly, you feel like you are ready and maybe overdue. You wonder what you need to do to be asked to do more in your job? There is no easy answer to this question, other than when we are in this space we need to be sure that we are truly able to take on more and the best way to know that we are is to prove it in the results of our current work. Too many times we want to take on more but we haven’t really completed what we have on our plate, but we think we have. We go forward and raise our hand to do more and our bosses say, “well, what about this and what about that?” And then we end up flat-footed, thinking that we had just done something good but feeling bad that we might have actually let someone down. Proving by completing and producing results is not just a work thing, it is a Biblical principle. In the parable of the talents we hear the master say to the servant who had invested and returned the talents beyond expectations; “The master said, “Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let’s celebrate together!” This parable is of course sending us the larger and more powerful message of what God wants to be able to say to each and every one of us when we reach his throne in heaven, but there is no reason to not use the same message to understand how we are to approach everything we do in life, including our work. We each have our own talents that we have been given and we have put them to work in our chosen professions and jobs. When the time comes to take on more, it should be because we took a little and made a lot so that we did it the old fashioned way, “we earned it”. Be good and faithful, you servants. All and more will come to you if you remain steadfast.

Reference: Matthew 25:23 (New Living Testament)