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 2507: The Sweet Spot

“Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’”

How do we know what is that we are supposed to be doing, where, when and with whom?  These are the questions that keep career advisors and job coaches in business.  We never really know, but when we are there, it feels like a sweet spot.  Dave Blanchard, who founded and runs an organization that supports faith-based businesses and CEOs describes the sweet spot as this. It’s the intersection (remember Venn Diagrams from post 2505) of:  “Loving to do”,  “Good at doing it”, and “Could be paid to do it”. It’s a nice summary of what we should keep in front of us as we consider job moves, career shifts, education, etc. Too many times we get caught up in one of the three and miss the other two, or worse yet we ignore all three and end up in a place of just getting paid for something we can do without any love or passion for the work.

I know that I am guilty of going though the motions for God and forgetting the why of what I am doing. Dave Blanchard has it right for why we should also be bringing all of ourselves to work each day and that is because we “Love to do” for God.  When we are reminded that all that we get to do is because Jesus sacrificed Himself for us, out of love, then it should be apparent that we are in the sweet spot when we “Love to do” for Him, each and every day!

Reference: Matthew 22:37 (New Living Translation)