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 2835: Rewards

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“Have you seen the giant?” the men asked. “He comes out each day to defy Israel. The king has offered a huge reward to anyone who kills him”

We have become hooked on rewards.  It seems like rewards are offered for so many things that we feel we can’t get people to do much of anything (even the right things) without offering them a reward. What is that about?  Are we so far gone that we won’t return the wallet, book, dog, etc. without a reward? It seems like that’s just the way it is.  Just to get a little bit of survey information commands some kind of reward now.  We will many times use “loyalty” miles or points as the guise, but they are still rewards to get us to do something. Many of our problems with work culture and beyond are because we only will do what we do when we get something positive for ourselves in return.  We aren’t going to change a reward-based culture but we can use it to help us make sure that we also rewarding for the good that is done for others.

I’m pretty sure that David was going to fight Goliath without the rewards as he was just a kid at the time (reward was for one of the King’s daughter as a wife, and a lifetime of no taxes for the warrior and his family), but even as of that time the reward-based culture was being promoted.  While rewards will always be there for us, what if we were to become the people who act and commit with, or without any rewards or incentives?  How different will our actions be if we adopt this philosophy?  Think about what is in front of us today and in this week.  What can we do differently and maybe even more this week without something extra coming our way?

Reference: 1 Samuel 17:25 (New Living Translation)