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 88: Better To Keep It To Yourself

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I was with some friends the other night and as usual in most conversations, the subject drifted to a work situation. One of the guys was describing a person who he works with who no matter what the topic or issue will turn the attention to himself and all the great things he has done. My friend described it as “sickening” and so predictable that everyone knows that it is coming. As such, this person is avoided and others don’t want to be assigned projects or work with him. As I reflected on this, it made me wonder if the person who is the attention-grabber even knows that he is being this way and worse, does anyone really care enough about him now to pull him aside and let him know. Probably not on both fronts. It is very easy to become an attention-grabber and focus on yourself rather than others. Work is sort of set up that way anyway with individual contributions being called out and recognized and rewarded so often. But this idea of boasting and pounding on our chests about our achievements runs counter to the life that we are supposed to be living. I love what Paul has to say about it in 2 Corinthians 10:18. He says, “When people boast about themselves, it doesn’t count for much.” That’s about as in your face as something could be said. He is telling us that all of the bravado and the trying to get the attention and the credit is wasted time, energy and effort. Simply put, “it doesn’t count much”. We only have so much time in the day, the week, and in our careers so shouldn’t’ we spend that time on the things that do count for something not the things don’t count much? The things that count are the time that we spend furthering our purpose and strengthening our relationship with God and others. Today when the credit is getting doled out, the best thing you might do is to just keep your thoughts and words to yourself and let the boasting about something great you did be done by someone else. That moment of silence and restraint might actually end up being something that does count after all.

Reference: 2 Corinthians 10:18 (New Living Testament)