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 2590: Time Focus: Problems Or Opportunities?

“Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift.”

Today we return to work after our last long weekend before Good Friday and if we don’t get off on that Friday then the stretch goes all the way to Memorial Day.  It’s a long stretch and if the weather is bad or winter just hangs on we can find ourselves falling into the daily complaint mode.  We can end up thinking everything is a problem and we become pretty dour to those around us. Or, we look to the bright side and we become the ones who give out energy and encouragement.  We only have so much time today, the same amount for each of us, and we get to choose if we are going to look at each hour or minute as filled with problems or opportunities. I don’t have to tell you which one will make us more likeable.

Paul had to finally just get over whatever his affliction was but was struggling. Once he heard God tell him that He would deliver all of God’s strength to Paul in Paul’s weakness, then everything changed for him.  Paul was an interesting dude as best we can tell; he needed to be jolted to get his attention, but once God did, he changed radically.  Paul went from one who spent his time on a problem to being uplifted and seeing the opportunities. It was God’s grace that made the change so if we are looking at a pile of problems today and we want them turn into opportunities, then we just need to turn them over to Him and let Him help us sort them out.

Reference: 2 Corinthians 12:9 (MSG)