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 2624: Modern Motivators

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“Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works.”

Seth Godin writes about what drives behavior in a modern and privileged society.  He says it is these things:

  • Fear
  • Desire for habit and ease
  • Greed (fueled by fear)
  • Curiosity
  • Generosity/Connection

I wish I could say that we are more driven by the bottom two than the top three, but I think that assessment would be wrong. What those who try to motivate us to act, purchase, change, etc. do is use behavioral economics to make trade-offs from where we might be in one of the five above to another, wanting to move us just enough to get a reaction and action that is desired.  We fall for it all day long and of course, we learn how to do the same to garner and win over customers and consumers.  The question is, “What responsibility do we have to be sure that we aren’t always driving people to fear, habit, ease or greed?”

I’m pretty sue that we can’t follow God’s commands to motivate one another to acts of good and love if we are using fear, habit, ease or greed as the behavioral  catalyst.  We should let those who aren’t trying to model Jesus in their work do that.  We should focus on the good, the generosity and the hopefulness that comes from positive curiosity and connection. It’s a small but important example to others.

Hebrews 10:24 (New Living Translation)