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 2939: Specialists

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“Instead, let us test and examine our ways. Let us turn back to the Lord.”

I recently went to see my doctor (an internal medicine generalist) for an annual checkup.  At the conclusion of his general examination he decided that he’d like me to see a specialist to follow up on an area that caught his attention.  He said, “I don’t think there is anything wrong here, but this is what specialists are for.”  It got me thinking that this is why we have the need for functional specialists, experts if you will, within our companies.  I was talking to an entrepreneur who is a bit overwhelmed because he is playing both the general leader of the company and also trying to hold down a couple of specialist roles (Finance, Marketing) at the same time.  Needless to say he is overwhelmed and concerned he is not doing any of the jobs he has all that well.  We can’t always afford to have specialists on hand at all times, but when we feel we need one, we best heed our own advice and find one to take a better look at the situation than what we can do being just a generalist.

It’s a great verse above from Lamentations because God let’s us do the general examinations on our life – looking at areas like our motivations, our attitudes, the use of our time, our resources, how we are treating others, the words we use, etc.  And when we are done with our self-exam He points us back to Him, the great specialist for guidance, advice, wisdom, direction and yes, healing.  If we try to be both the general examiner of ourselves and the specialist then watch out as we might miss what it is that we need to be addressing or worse yet, not be able to address or fix the underlying problem.

Reference:  Lamentations 3:40 (New Living Translation)