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 358: Quarterly Bonuses

I am working with a company that wants my help in building out a performance bonus plan for their executives. They have never had a bonus plan before and now that they are making money as a company and hitting regular revenue targets they believe that if they put in a more formal bonus payment plan that they could even exceed what they are doing now. When diving in further as to what they would like designed they expressed the interest in a quarterly plan versus an annual payout. This makes sense for a lot of companies and for certain jobs that have quarterly revenue targets, etc. it definitely fits. However, as I continued to dig what I heard was that the real reason behind the quarterly targets comes down to a matter of trust. There is a lack of trust by some that if the plan is built annually that by the end of the year management might change the targets or explain the results in a way that would not benefit the employee who had earned the bonus. Much of our troubles at work are built off of mistrust about what is going to happen to us versus what we deserve. We see lots of examples where the mistrust is justified but we have to avoid becoming one of the mistrustful people. My Father said never to put your faith in people for they will let you down. He was right, but that does not mean that we can’t live with an attitude of healthy trust instead of being one of the people who always think the glass is out to kill us. God tells us to be trustful because if we have placed our trust and faith in the right place then we can take whatever comes our way as part of His plan. We read in Psalm 31:19; “Your goodness is so great! You have stored up great blessings for those who honor you.” There it is. We don’t have to worry about what we can trust or not. We can make our way today and tomorrow knowing that if we honor God with our hands, our mind and our heart that we can expect more blessings than we can fathom. And we can be an example to others that it is okay to to trust and now worry about the short-run, like this quarter, but stay focused on the great things that will happen in the end.

Reference: Psalm 31:9 (New Living Testament)