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 3K61: Finding Patterns

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“Hold on to the pattern of wholesome teaching you learned from me – a pattern shaped by the faith and love that you have in Christ Jesus.”

Much of business comes down to pattern recognition. As much as we all would like to short-cut experience to gain our own patterns, much of it still comes with time. Of course, there are ways to accelerate this by reading business books, studying business cases, listening intently, hanging out with other business leaders and learning about their companies and what they are going through, etc. But, at the end of the day, being able to say, “I’ve seen this before”, becomes invaluable. So, why is it that there are many people who have worked for a long time but they don’t make the connections or they don’t carry over the transferable learning from one situation to another? It starts with truly wanting to be a learner and looking at every day as your “laboratory” for experiences that you can carry from one place to another. It’s an attitude and outlook decision. If we just go through our work from day to day and not look at each day as the opportunity to add something to our backpack of knowledge, then we are missing part of the joy of work. Instead, we should look at every new day, every new job, every new assignment, every new co-worker, every new boss, as new ingredients and materials that come into out laboratory.

Finding the right patterns that can be carried through life is part of our human success story. God has given us a chocked-full Book of Knowledge that we can find our life pattern if we so choose to do so. There is no greater pattern of life than the one that our Lord set for us. If we are committed to becoming His followers and students then we can take that pattern and apply it to all parts of our lives and yes, even our work. What pattern are we following today? If not the right one, then make today the day that the pattern shifts to one that others will recognize as the image of Christ.

Reference: 2 Timothy 1:13 (New Living Translation)