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 2608: Full Count

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“You see, his faith and his actions worked together. His actions made his faith complete.”

It is that time when the Major League Baseball season has started.  This time of year we read and hear many baseball analogies (happens again during the World Series) so I might as well fall for it as well.  I do a lot of career “advicing”.  That is different from career counseling as counseling involves going deep into one’s skills and trying to ascertain where and how those skills can best be used.  My “advicing” is more about trying to help people understand what it is they broadly are dreaming about doing and then trying to assist them in the different paths and choices that they might take.  This is where the baseball analogy comes into play.  A baseball player at bat gets a maximum of six in-play pitches before the at bat is over.  A “full count” consists of three balls and two strikes.  The next pitch determines what will happen next: a walk on four balls, a strike out on three strikes, contact of bat to ball on the sixth pitch that results in a hit or an out or continuing pitches because foul balls went out of play. What does this have to do with career advice?  Well, even in the day of many more jobs that one may hold in their career than ever before, we can come back to that we, on average, will work for maybe 5-6 companies that make up our career.  Which should force us into being very deliberate and thoughtful before we “swing” at a new job that is pitched our way. There are many ways to get on base and to get that best job, but being very patient to wait for that high fast ball before changing jobs may be the best career advice I have. To swing at anything less, the odds go up that we might not make it to first base.

God does not limit the number of opportunities that He puts in front of us to represent Him and bring glory to Him in our work.  It might even be easier to say that He is constantly providing those to us. In these cases, and when He does, it’s not up to us to determine what will happen after we swing at the pitch He has given us.  What I am pretty sure of is that when we swing and do so with obedience and faith, that He turns it into the high fast ball that He wants us to hit.  It’s us that let’s ourselves get to a full count. But, the gift is that if we keep swinging, He loves to keeps us at the plate.

Reference: James 2:22 (New Living Translation)