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 1996: The Licensing Effect

“The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience.”

In 2006 two professors, Uzma Khan and Ravi Dhar, described a marketing psychology, which they dubbed, “The Licensing Effect”.  Boiling it down, they proved that when we make decisions, we do so against contingencies.  That is to say, that we will balance a whole bunch of factors before we choose, and two of those choices are what’s good for me, and what is bad for me.  And then that means those two choices are not one or another, but instead blended.  Practically, this shows up when someone looks at dinner and because they have a salad to start dinner, then they justify the “good” will allow for the cheeseburger and fries for the entrée, even though that is “bad”.  Thus we allow for a “license” for us to add the bad because the good is in the mix.  I wonder if that isn’t the same reason that we buy hybrid cars even though we know that the SUV is still a gas guzzler, but just because it uses some electric…

As we strive to work and live lives that bring glory and honor to God, we are always under attack with the “Licensing Effect”.  We can deceive ourselves that the time we spent in church yesterday was enough to balance out our words and actions for the week.  It’s so obvious that we can fall for this over and over.  And even if we are deeper in our faith and are daily in the Word, prayer and fellowship, this does not make us immune as we think we can take “license”.  Let’s not fall for it!

Reference: 1 Corinthians 10:13 (New Living Translation)