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 2395: Being Intentional

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“Moses was 120 years old when he died, yet his eyesight was clear, and he was as strong as ever.”

Patti and I recently went on a sailing vacation.  It was great and at the end, it was as relaxing of an away time that I can remember.  I was trying to put my finger on why and I decided it was because I was very intentional about this time.  You see, Patti easily gets motion-sickness and the thought of her EVER being able to be on a boat, of any kind, for an extended amount of time seemed pretty farfetched.  But, she was up for it and we gave it a try.  After the first day she was great but it was me who found himself having to be more intentional about the whole thing.  A few nights in I was starting to dread the evenings as I would put myself to sleep thinking hard about not paying attention to the rocking and swaying motion of the boat. I noticed that before I would start to feel queasy I would get a headache and after a couple of days I figured out that the headache was from me concentrating so hard about not feeling the motions.  It was an interesting lesson in mindfulness and what the mind can do.  But, I digress.  The flip side of all of the concentration and being intentional was that the focus yielded amazing times of peacefulness and rest.  Why is this useful?  Well, when we become intentional about anything, we can release the freedom of creativity and flow that I don’t think we experience otherwise. The best professional golfers will tell you that when they succeed it is because they focus on every shot, one shot at a time and block out all else and at the end of a round or tournament, they can then see the results.  What if we were able to find more space and time in our work (and organizations) for intentional focus?  What might flow from there?

Moses died when he was 120, but if I read the Bible right, he didn’t die from old age.  He died because God told him it was time for Him to pass the leadership to Joshua and to address the people with his last teachings (and song). It is hard to find anyone in the Bible who was more intentional than Moses.  His life was about daily keeping focus on the following of the Lord and collectively leading a people who were prone to stray.  But, when it was time, God told him and then left him and us with the blessing of there never being anyone like him again.  Would any of us, given the same opportunity step up to be as intentional as Moses?  Nope, but that doesn’t mean that God doesn’t want to release amazing things through us, if we can just be intentional today about Him!

Reference: Deuteronomy 34:7 (New Living Translation)