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 1356: Bonus Money

“For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.”

End of Q1 just happened. Annual bonuses for the prior year have been paid, or are readying to be paid. Bonus time can be an awkward time because we distill down a year’s worth of work and results into one single payout formula or reason. Bonus payments can cause all kinds of consternation and mixed messages. Not to mention that we need to be sure that bonuses are not just turning into deferred compensation for doing only what was expected in the job. Bonus means something above and beyond. Are we using our bonus program for such, or are we just allowing our people to become obsessed on an amount of money that doesn’t really drive greater than expected results and performance?

When everyone around us is obsessed on bonus time, it’s hard for us to not also become that way. But, we have to keep ourselves in check because we know that at its root, the love of money is not good. We have to be careful to not allow ourselves to fall into this money trap. There is nothing wrong with expecting and working towards earning what we think is commensurate with our efforts and performance, but there is a line and we need to be sure that we stay on this side of that line.

Reference: 1 Timothy 6:10 (New Living Translation)