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 2814: Holding Both Thoughts

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 “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.”

It feels like for the past 11 weeks I’ve been having the same conversation over and over.  It’s been about how do we plan for the future and the present at the same time?  Normally, that is difficult, but in this time when the present is really unclear, the future is even more blurry.  But, we have to be able to hold both thoughts at the same time otherwise we will find ourselves on the extremes; too near-sighted or too out of touch with reality.  One of the entrepreneurs of a company where I am an investor is holding the thoughts of 20 months and 20 years and doing a great job of it.  The irony and possibly the breakthrough is that before the need to do so, 20 years was never a thought, but now it sets a strategic direction and vision that is helping tremendously for planning 20 months. Yes, we can look more closely while we still look farther and yes we can hold two thoughts at once if we decide to do so.

Jesus gave us two thoughts to hold onto simultaneously when He provided us with the commandments to love God and love others.  And even, when He distilled it all down for us to these two thoughts and direction, we struggle to keep them both in our heads, heart and actions at the same time. Now is a great time to spend a few of these open minutes to self-evaluate on how well we are holding both thoughts and how are they both showing up for others  through our lives?

Reference:  Mark 12:29 (New International Version)

I’m excited to be hosting this Sunday night’s Online Live CornerstoneSF “Tightrope Talks”.  We go live at 6pm PST/9pm EST!

We’ll be exploring “Creativity in Captivity”, which we can all likely relate to right now.

It would be an honor to have you join us.

Register: cornerstonesf.churchcenter.com/registrations/

Tune In: facebook.com/events/5411467