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 2424: Focus, People!

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“Then Samuel said to all the people of Israel, “If you want to return to the Lord with all your hearts, get rid of your foreign gods and your images of Ashtoreth. Turn your hearts to the Lord and obey him alone; then he will rescue you from the Philistines.””

I work with an organization that has a focus problem. Actually, It is not an uncommon problem. A focus problem is that we want to do many good things to grow the company or run it more efficiently, but we are not able to give up on the things that we are doing that are holding us back or diluting our focus.  The greatest companies and organizations are those who know where they want to goal (vision/strategy), why they want to go there (purpose/mission), set a path and plan to get there (goals/objectives) and relentlessly march together to achieve (metrics/rewards/recognition).  They are not afraid to miss out on a few things that are out of their focus.  It means that they are serious about the focus they have.  We should always be asking ourselves how serious are we about our focus?

And, we should be asking ourselves how serious we are in our focused walk with God.  Samuel bluntly challenged the seriousness of the people of Israel when he told them that the only way back to the Lord was to get rid of all of the other stuff that was impeding them.  He was basically saying, “Focus, people!” Isn’t that what God is saying to us too today?  “Focus, Rusty!” is what I hear!  What do you hear?

Reference: 1 Samuel 7:3 (New Living Translation)