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 2190: PBL Motivators

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“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

PBL!  Are you thinking, what kind of sandwich can this be?  Peanut, Butter and Lettuce?  Yuck!  No, we are not today exploring sandwiches, we are looking at the motivators that are PBL: “Points”, “Badges” and “Leaderboards”.  These three areas sit at the heart of the motivators that are used by those who use “Gamification” with their consumers.  “Oh, I don’t play any of those games”, you say.  Well, when was the last time you cashed in your loyalty points? Or maybe you trade in those grocery store points for that gasoline discount?  And, you might like to look every now and then at those badges you earned from your Fitbit (or even the ones you earned back in Girl/Boy Scouts).  You see, we are already conditioned to PBL, we just don’t always recognize it, which means that our customers and consumers are ready for more PBL too.

Isn’t it refreshing that God doesn’t ask us to earn any PBLs for favor of His love and grace? But, you know, the fact that He doesn’t, makes it that much more important that we self-motivate and self-discipline to find our way closer and closer to Him.  No, we won’t get a badge for our Bible study time, but we will learn more than we could ever earn.  No, there isn’t any Leaderboard for who get the greater share of His love and that is good because it reinforces that His love is unlimited. And nope, there are no points that we can earn to find our way next to Him eternally. That is His gift for us to accept.  He just didn’t set us up to compete for Him, which we might want to be sure that we aren’t setting up something like “PBL” with others around us who need to see Christ reflected through us.

Reference:  Hebrews 11:6 (New Living Translation)