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 3K277: Perspective

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“When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.”

When we step away from anything for a bit or take our eye away we can lose some perspective.  Then we wonder, how can that happen?  Well, as much as we’d like to think that everything should revolve around us and change at our pace, it just doesn’t work that way.  I was asked by a good friend to step in on an interim basis and lead a part of his business. I was enticed. It is a fast growing company making a great impact and financially it would have been good too.  However, upon evaluation of where I am today, my perspective would not likely have been what the company needed.  Sometimes our perspectives are further away than what is required and sometimes our perspective can be too close and narrow to see the bigger picture.  Regardless, it is on us to know what our perspective is at any given time and then be honest about what we can, can’t, should and shouldn’t do.  Oh, and the perspective we have today may well expire tomorrow so if we want the most up to date perspective, we will have to constantly renew it.

Part or our faith journey is to have a perspective that matures.  Paul challenges the Corinthians to “grow up” in Christ and to put away the childish things that they once might have cared about and sought.  Terry Brisbane, my Pastor at CornerstoneSF, made an important clarification a few weeks ago as he taught about “Healthy Love” from 1 Corinthians Chapter 13.  He reminded us that “childish” and “childlike” mean two different things.  We are to put our childish perspective away and still retain our childlike perspective in order to receive the most from what God wants to teach us.  Some would say that perspective is all about where you have come from.  I believe God wants our perspective to be all about where we are going.

Reference: 1 Corinthians 13:11 (New Living Translation)