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 2541: Quiet Eyes

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“You should clothe yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God.”

My friend (and long time loyal PwK reader) Bob sent me an article on how the Formula One (F1) team McLaren improved their performance.  It’s attached here. It’s fascinating as the precision that goes into this type of racing is so critical. There are a couple of great lessons in here, but the one that really caught me was the concept of having “Quiet Eyes”.  The research their Team Chief did to find that extra edge resulted in recognizing that just the fraction of a second that high performance athletes take to concentrate on their targets (whether it is a golf putt or a basketball rim) can make all of the difference. He deemed that extra-time moment as “Quiet Eyes”.  It made me think that we could all benefit from finding the opportunities we have to find our own “Quiet Eyes” moments that could improve our performance.  We are in the age of distraction so it is harder and harder to find just that extra minute or moment, but as the data shows, it’s worth it.

Is God not asking us to give Him some more of our “Quiet Eyes” when He says for us to be still and listen for Him.  Each day with a little more time focused on Him, we could find another level of peace, joy and love which we can carry with us into our workday. Our work is important without question, but within our work we can bring our own “Quiet Eyes” into our jobs and to our work spaces. We all know there is enough “noise” to try and pull us in the wrong directions, so it’s worth the extra attention and time to be sure that we don’t get caught up in that noise.

Reference: 1 Peter 3:4 (New Living Translation)