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 3K283: I Don’t

“Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you your heart’s desires.”

The world is full of people, myself included, who like to be able to say, “I do”.  Those words may come out of us when someone asks, “Who knows (fill in the blank?”, or “Who knows how?”, or “Who has experience with…?”, etc.  We like to be the people who can step forward and get the assignment, be recognized, be rewarded, etc.  But how many times do we run into those who freely and honestly will say, “I don’t (fill in the blank).  I think of the times that I personally would have done better for a company or others if I’d only said, “I don’t know”, “I don’t have that experience”, or “I don’t think I’m the best for this”.  When we are looking for the next best leaders or coworkers finding those who are willing to say, “I don’t” could be very advantageous in the long run.

While interviewing author and businessman Terry Looper for the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast, Terry talked about the importance of figuring out who God is to each of us and he said part of that is recognizing what God can do and what we can’t.  He spoke of of listing out the things that God does, but “I don’t”.  That list is long if we take the time to think about it.  God sees the future, “I don’t”.  God knows best, “I don’t”.  God loves all around us, “I don’t” that is for sure. What is it today that we might be holding onto and thinking we know best but instead we should be saying, “I don’t”.

Psalm 37:4 (New Living Translation)