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 2942: Deadlines

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“Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.”

Patti just finished one of those TV Series wheres the good guy is a bad guy and the bad guy is worse, so you end up hoping the best for the least bad of the two.  (They say that in the American narratives that it was movie Bonnie and Clyde that first got us rooting for the bad guys and we have never gone back).  In this show, at one time the baddest guy says, “You have until the day after tomorrow at 10AM to show me the goods.  That is your deadline and in my line of business, there is a reason we call it a deadline.”  I’d never thought about it that way before, and I’m sure glad that our deadlines are not that severe, but we do still have deadlines we have to meet.  There are multiple outcomes of a deadline: 1) we miss it all together. 2) we make it but the collateral damage from the stress and pressure seems worse than missing the deadline. 3) we meet or are early to the deadline and no one ever sees us sweat.  The latter is the desired, but we don’t make that happen without a lot of planning, preparation and being wise to what we commit and when.  But, if we are smart we can make deadlines look easy.

How we approach a deadline or any pressures has much to do with our attitude.  James calls it out the way that we should approach all things of trouble or stress.  Deadlines can instead be opportunities for joy if we play them out right. So, whatever we are facing today, let’s consider the other side of the coin and what can be made possible just by how we approach the situation.

Reference:  James 1:2 (New Living Translation)