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 2429: Maybe Not All That Complicated?

purposed worKING No Comments

“All goes well for those who are generous, who lend freely and conduct their business fairly.”

I have a good friend who owns and runs a small business. It’s now in its’ 4th generation.  If you ask him about the secret to their longevity and success he doesn’t give a Harvard Business Review response, instead he talks about his family’s and his inability to think beyond keeping the business simple.  I like the self-deprecation that comes in his answer as actually he is very smart and indeed displays that trait by recognizing the value of keeping things simple;  A few product lines that are strategic and then made to be competitive through focus and execution. We like to make things complex, but sometimes, the answers lie right in front of us when we keep it simple.

We will go to work today. We might already be at work as we are reading this.  In front of us is a list of things to do that is longer than this day, probably longer than the rest of this week or even the rest of this month.  At the same time we have pressures outside of work bearing down on us and we are trying to make sense of it all. It’s hard to know how to balance so we need to fall back on those principles we know are simple to follow. Psalm 112:5 hit me with one of those simple truths today and maybe it can assist you too. All will go well if we are generous, free in our lending of what we have (time and resources) and we are fair in how we go about our work. Simple truths to make what we have in on our plate less complicated.

Reference: Psalm 112: 5 (New Living Translation)