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 2529: Getting Into Shape

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“Pay careful attention to your own work, for then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done, and you won’t need to compare yourself to anyone else.”

My physical trainer challenged me over the summer to stay in the gym working with resistance and weights, even though he wouldn’t be there to train me (he lives in California and we summer in Rhode Island).  Well, I can honestly say, “I tried”.  But, that didn’t get me into the gym consistently.  He then asked me, “Who are you doing this for?”.  Naturally, I said “Me”.  And that was the problem.  If only doing it for myself, I can be as energetic, committed or lazy as I want to be, without any real accountability. I only pay attention to what I want to pay attention.  It’s the same in our work.  If it is only about for us (the selfish) approach, then we will only do what we need to do, without regard for what we need to do for others.  To stay in the shape we need to be in and to be there for others takes the reminding of ourselves that somethings we need to do, just because we are doing it for the good of others.

The author of the book, “Renewal as a Way of Life” (the title itself is a great challenge to us), Richard Lovelace wrote: “Inordinate affection – loving ourselves, or others or things more than God- always bends us out of shape”.  If we are feeling like we are out of spiritual shape today, we may want to look at where and how we are placing our attention and affection with and for God.

Reference: Galatians 6:4 (New Living Translation)