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 155: “What’s My Motivation?”

purposed worKING No Comments

Actors are always looking for their “motivation”. They draw upon the life stories they have seen and experienced to find themselves in the character that they are playing at the time. The best of the best can find motivation from the smallest of details and turn those into realistic actions that others will believe. In our work we many times find ourselves asking the same question about what is our motivation for the work we do; to make or support a decision, or to understand how to close a sale, or to have the difficult conversation with someone on our team, or to go to the extra efforts to complete a project, or to take a stand with our boss over something we might have a disagreement. We tend to try and seek our own “motivation” for those situations. Sometimes that motivation will come from our own instilled work ethic, or our desire to achieve and accomplish, or peer pressure, or guilt of letting someone down, or fear of failure, or fear of loss of our position or status, or a positive role model around us who we want to emulate. Our motivation to do what needs to be done can come from many places and those motivations can be situational and change over time. At certain points in our career we are motivated by achievement or progression and at other times that motivation is not there at all. Our motivations can come and go. Many, many factors influence our motivations and what is important is that we are in touch with what those are and we manage our emotions and actions against those motivations. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons can sometimes be worse than doing nothing at all. As believers we have the greatest motivation of all. In 2 Corinthians 5:14, Paul says; “Whatever we do, it is because Christ’s love controls us”. That is a motivation that if we could find ourselves being able to tap into at all times and draw upon consistently then we would always know the right thing to do and we would do these things in the right way. It is easier said than done, but like the actor who spends many hours and hours working over even one single line of text, we must do the same to find that closeness to God so that we can draw upon His love for our lives. We have the greatest of all motivations with us at all times with a script that we can spend an eternity learning from. As you enter this workday take God’s script and love with you and let the day play out in His love and watch how much more believable you will be to others and to yourself.

Reference: 2 Corinthians 5:14 (New Living Testament)