Skip to content Ben Utecht | Ignite Kingdom Conference Session Aug 26 · 1 hr 6 min ...more
135K followers
Kraig and Desiree Bougher are Spirit-filled business leaders who God has called to display His heart for the marketplace - Making the Marketplace the Miracle
135K followers
In this video 0:00 Lessons from Dad and Super Bowl Obedience7:11 Belief: Biblical Foundation of Culture16:20 Practice Makes Champions: NFL Systems23:18 Transformed by Culture, Introducing Belief Archetype46:34 Q&A and Closing
Lessons from Dad and Super Bowl Obedience 0:07 Every company on the planet talks about culture, but very few know what to do about it. I learned that in a Super Bowl champion locker0:19 room playing for hall of fame coach Tony Dungy. He believed that if you build better men, you get better football players. He was the 1st to show me that culture doesn't have to be0:31 subjective, that culture can be an objective product. You will always have a culture by design or default, so why not design0:46 it? Every human being on the planet, no matter where you come from, is universally connected by the power of belief. And so I was practicing a shared belief0:58 system that led to ultimate success. What Tony Dungy accomplished was not just building a world class organization, but more1:10 importantly, transforming the lives of every single player that became a part of that team. You see, at the end of the day,1:21 beliefs and values are just words on a website or on a wall unless you practice them and develop them within yourselves. And that is what the blueprint of building a1:33 world championship culture is all about. When we create a culture of purpose, significance, and value, not only are we going to have a huge impact on the1:45 bottom line, but more importantly, we are gonna transform the lives of every single person that comes in contact with our brand. The ultimate goal of culture is to pour purpose
1:57 into people's life. Will you choose to be the champion of your culture and win? Alright. Good morning.
2:10 Wow. Sandy, no hatred already? Okay. I didn't realize how many Colts fans would be here in Nashville. We got Colts fans instead of Titan fans? Okay.
2:22 Well, it's such an honor to be here with all of you this morning. Such a blessing. Craig and Des, thank you so much for the information or for the invitation to be here with you. And and Craig and Dagon Ignite, they they
2:33 want all of you to have a true NFL experience this morning. So after the presentation, I will hang around, and if you want, I will hit you as hard as I possibly can.
2:45 Okay. My career ended due to concussion, and I feel like we should all experience 1 at least once in our no. I'm just kidding. Right? But man, it's it's been it's so amazing
2:57 to transition into what the Lord's calling an assignment on my life is. And it is still a mystery, how I went from 1 career, where my job was to hit people for a living,
3:09 to now a career where my job is to care about people for a living. And it was all at the hands of 1 man, Tony Dungy. Before I begin, just a little bit more information about me. I grew up in a small river town
3:21 in Minnesota, ended up staying home to play football at the University of Minnesota, went on to play 7 years in the NFL, 4 with the Indianapolis Colts, winning a Super Bowl in
3:32 2006 against the Chicago Bears. Any Bears fans? I'm sorry. I'm just actually, I'm not that sorry because this is a pretty cool ring. It's really awesome. No.
3:44 But you'll always have Devin Hester on the 1st play when he ran it all, remember, he ran it all the way back for a touchdown. Went on to play 3 years with the Cincinnati Bengals. Unfortunately, my career came to an end
3:56 due to 0.2 concussion, but that transitioned me into what the Lord has called me to do today, which is to bring the culture of Christ into the marketplace.
4:09 I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a franchisor, and for the last 4 years, I've been the chief culture officer in a large private equity company in Minnesota, overseeing the culture building and
4:21 transformation across 28 companies in 9 different industries. And so I come to you today not only as an inspirationalist and a motivationalist of the importance of culture,
4:34 but an operationalist. And as we know in business, we have to apply in order to actually build and grow our businesses. And so I
4:45 come to you today as a speaker to inspire you towards seeing culture through a unique lens, but also as a business owner and an executive. So I can really understand where each of
4:57 you are sitting in this room. And so the the goal today is to take you on a journey. I want to inspire you to see how the biblical framework for organizational culture gives us the opportunity
5:10 to apply a strategy and a system that actually drives the growth of the company. And then we have a special gift for you, Ignite and myself, at the end that that
5:21 I'm excited to share with you. And if we have time, we'll do a little q and a, but I want to keep us on track this morning. So you all ready to begin? Go ahead. Okay. Here we go. Yes.
5:43 Check 1, 2. Check 1, 2. Is that better? Yeah. Everybody hear me okay? Yes. I'll never forget the 1st time I walked into that team meeting room in Indianapolis. Hall of fame coach Tony
5:54 Dungy walks into the room, and the 1st thing out of his mouth, to a group of 53 of the most diverse, powerful, and let's be honest, egotistical men on the planet, because you can't get to that
6:06 level if you don't have that kind of confidence. And the 1st words out of his mouth were, men, if you're sitting in this room and your entire identity is wrapped up in a sport, you've
6:18 completely missed the purpose of your life. What? I remember sitting back just thinking, okay, I've never heard anything like
6:29 this, anything like this in football. Man, if you're sitting in this room and your entire identity is wrapped up in a sport, you've completely missed the purpose of your life. You've got to know that leadership styles
6:41 in sports come from this old school fear mentality. We're going to break you down, and we're going to build you back up. We're going to demand that you behave this way, or you're not going to play. And here is a man
6:52 saying that your entire identity is much more significant than a sport. He went on to say, look, my job here is to win. I have to win in Indianapolis, but more important,
7:05 my job is to build a family, and the acronym for family in football is Forget About Me, I Love You. Woah. I'm looking around the room. I'm sitting 2
Belief: Biblical Foundation of Culture
7:17 seats to the right from Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning, who's just locked in on what Tony Dungy has to say. Coach Dungy was the
7:28 1st to teach me that culture does not have to be subjective. It's the most talked about theme in business, but we don't know what to do about it. Right? CS Lewis tells us that subjectivism is
7:40 going to be the fall of man, because it puts the hands of truth into the community. What we're trying to do is build an objective belief
7:52 system and a system that we can practice in order to truly develop ourselves towards the core beliefs and values of the organization.
8:04 Tony's belief was if you build better men, you get better football players. But it was way more than words on a website. There was a strategy and a system that we
8:16 practiced every single week, not only to become better athletes on the football field, but to become better men in life. Because if we're going to espouse a
8:28 belief and a value like integrity, then we better develop
8:43 integrity that I've had to do over the last 15 years is to convince owners and executives that culture truly matters, that it's more than words on a website, that you will always have
8:55 a culture by design or default. It's true, Because we know in psychology that your beliefs ultimately drive your behaviors. So we're always going to have 1. So why not
9:07 design it? Why not make it an objective strategy and build objective systems, just like we do operationally in our businesses in order to accomplish the
9:19 ultimate goal of transformational culture that's actually building and growing the success of our companies? And there's no better framework to do that than through
9:31 the culture of Christ. So let's go on this journey. It was February 4th of 2007. There was a cool Miami Florida mist filling the Dolphin Stadium for Super Bowl 41. It was 1
9:43 of only 2 Super Bowls in the history of football to rain. And when you're losing in the rain, it sucks. It's not fun, because all the water and all the mud gets into all the wrong places,
9:55 and it's uncomfortable. But man, when you're winning in the rain, it's amazing. It's like being whisked back in time. You're in the backyard with your buddies. It doesn't matter where the water goes. It
10:07 doesn't matter where the mud goes. Everything feels like a miracle. I'll never forget, Prince played at halftime.
10:18 Prince sang purple rain in the rain. It has been rated the number 1 halftime show in the history of Super Bowls. If you haven't seen it, you need to go watch it. It's
10:30 amazing. The Colts were in the tunnel, and the ref is standing in front of the Colts, and his his arms are up, and he's holding the Colts back. Sudden he gets the signal and he drops his hands and he releases
10:42 the cults. And like a stampede we come flying out of that tunnel. I'll never forget when my foot planted on that freshly cut Bermuda grass, I heard a familiar voice
10:55 behind me from the stands shouting my name, Ben! Ben! And I turned, and there was my dad. My dad
11:07 had fought his way halfway around the stadium to find himself in the perfect position, hanging over the railing with his hand out in the craziest yoga position you've ever seen.
11:19 And wouldn't you believe in that moment, dad and I shooed him away. And I
11:28 said, dad, not now.
11:32 This is a Super Bowl. Like, I gotta go to work. Not now. I took 1 more step onto that field, and it was like the fist of God sucker punched me. I physically stopped.
11:46 And I heard the voice of the Holy Spirit say, what are you doing? Go back to your father. Go back to where this all began.
11:58 How many in the room have been confronted with that moment? Where we come to the fork in the road and we have the truth sitting in front of us, but the distraction of the world and the vanity of the world and the
12:10 materialism of the world is challenging the nature and the core of our belief. I'm so glad I listened to the Holy Spirit in that moment. I turned and I started
12:22 running back towards the tunnel. My dad had already started to walk up the stairs, and I'm crying out, dad, dad. And he heard my voice. And he came back down and got into
12:34 that crazy yoga position and reached his hand down, friends, it was truly a cinematic moment. And I reached up, and I grabbed my dad's hands, and I said, dad, I love you.
12:47 It all started with you, and we just lost it. It all started with you, and it did. It started with my dad in the backyard of Rochester, Minnesota where he
12:58 would fall to his knees, and he'd let this 4 year old kid run into him with all of his might. He'd pretend to get blown up and fall down on his back, and he planted the seed. He planted the seed in the passion
13:11 for athletics in my life. But even more importantly than that, my dad planted the foundation of my identity and
13:23 purpose around belief.
13:25 Hey, fellow patriots. Rick Green from the Patriot Academy campus in Constitution City.
13:32 Was that in the slide deck? Yeah. Right?
13:44 That's awesome. So my dad has been a pastor for 50 years, and my dad has had a creed. And a creed is defined as a set of
13:56 beliefs that guide the behaviors and actions of people. And my dad instilled within me the importance of understanding deeply and defining what your beliefs
14:08 are and applying them to practice. And these were 4 foundational beliefs that my dad poured into my life. Number 1, Ben, you have to honor God, because I believe playing for a purpose bigger than yourself produces
14:20 greatness. Ben, work harder than everybody else, because I believe hard work develops talent and character. Ben, never ever stop improving, because I believe
14:32 there's always someone right behind you that wants your job. And, Ben, most importantly, have fun. Have fun because I believe if you don't love it, then what's the point?
14:45 You see, what my dad had done is he had taken what is subjective, and he had turned it into an objective belief system and have and had taught and discipled me over these years on
14:56 how to apply and practice and develop these beliefs in myself so that my behaviors are truly reflective of the core culture system that was a part of of my
15:08 family. And it all came down to 1 thing. It all came down to 1 thing, and that is building a culture that instills purpose or the calling or the assignment that the Lord has on your
15:20 life. Right? The ultimate goal of developing objective culture in our businesses is to create an environment that pours significance, value, and
15:32 purpose into the lives of every single person that comes in contact with your brand. What I thought was so powerful over the last 15 years, and I've been so blessed to be mentored by some of the
15:43 top chief people officers in the world, is that secular academia is directly connected to the foundational truth of the
15:55 Bible. That culture is built out of the foundation of belief, not value principles. Every single 1 of us
16:07 creates mission, vision, values, and we hide those value principles on an about page on a website, and we say, we've done it. We've built our culture. It's not good enough.
Practice Makes Champions: NFL Systems
16:20 When you study how many times the word value is used in scripture pertaining to human behavior, how many times is it? 0. How many times is the word belief or believe used
16:32 in scripture pertaining to human behavior? Over 160 times. As you see from that slide, if you guys can put that back up, doctor Edgar Sheen is otherwise known as the godfather
16:44 of organizational psychology, brought in by countries to do culture audits on the culture of the country. And this is what he says about culture. Every culture in the world comes out of the espoused
16:56 beliefs, assumptions, and artifacts of the community. Culture is built on the foundation of objective beliefs. The artifacts are the representations or
17:08 the symbols of those beliefs. So we sit around our board tables talking about what we believe in for hours in order to identify the artifacts of those beliefs, the core values that are the symbols
17:20 of what we truly believe. And within that framework is the opportunity to do something radical and special, and that's to build the belief strategy and the system to practice and
17:32 develop in our people that truly make them the storytellers of the core values. Right? That's the ultimate goal. That's the ultimate goal. And I can tell you it's 1 of the
17:43 hardest things to accomplish. I stand in front of companies all around the world, and 1 of my challenge questions is always, how many of you in the room can tell me how many core values are on your website that define
17:54 your culture? Almost never do you get more than a few hands. The next question is, can you tell me what those value principles are and what they mean? Right?
18:06 And we and we have right. This is the goal. Like, imagine if we have the majority of our company right away that says, yes. I can tell you what those value principles are and what they mean and how we actually practice
18:15 those. Right? I did a lot of work with a renowned sociologist, doctor Daniel Zizmer, and 1 of the things I learned in sociology is you have to make definitions
18:27 memorable so that they're scalable. Right? So we took that idea from doctor Sheen, and we put it into a definition of organizational culture that is memorable and scalable. Culture is what
18:39 we believe, why we believe, and ultimately how we choose to behave. And scripture directly supports that entire foundation. For God so loved the
18:51 world that he gave his 1 and only son that he should shouldsoever believe. There were many people that listened to Christ and valued what he had to say, but walked away in
19:03 disbelief. Belief is the foundation, and I'm telling you that it doesn't have to be subjective, and I can show you how we made belief objective and practiced it to build a
19:15 world championship organization, and how you can do that and bring that into your businesses. As a franchisor, I've fallen in love with this with this model, and and
19:27 don't forget, the NFL is a franchise. As a franchisor, I've learned that that industry is so successful because of its
19:38 ability to scale, and the reason a franchise can scale is dependent upon the efficiency of its franchise operating system. 1 of my mentors, Scott
19:50 Hillstrom, won the international franchise of the year award, which is the biggest award you can win at the IFA, and he was invited to sit at a table with the top
20:02 franchise CEOs in the world. He's sitting with the DeLucas of Subway and 7 11 and and so on, and he came back to me and he said, Ben, I was shocked when all of a sudden the conversation at
20:13 this table turned to 1 question, and the question was asked by 1 of these CEOs, who's the greatest franchise CEO in history? And everybody at the table said Jesus.
20:26 How powerful is that? But it was an objective comment because Jesus
20:39 took an objective belief system taught, trained, and coached 12, and today 2600000000 people on the planet identify Christianity as their faith.
20:51 Subway might have over 40000 locations. 7 11 might have over 70000 locations. Jesus has 2600000000 locations around the world
21:03 because of the greatest objective belief system the world's ever seen, and it's unstoppable. We can bring that into our businesses,
21:15 but you have to believe that culture actually drives success, and friends, we know that today. I can show you McKinsey, Deloitte, Korn Ferry,
21:27 Harvard we know because of the decades of engagement surveys that culture is not the soft skills. It's the hardest skills that we have because it's connected to the most
21:38 valuable asset we have, people. And if we're willing to take it seriously, it will enhance and grow the bottom line of your organizations. It will decrease attrition. It will increase
21:50 retention. It will increase productivity. It will increase performance. Right? And that's what it means to be excellent for Christ in how we apply
22:02 these strategies in our businesses. And it all comes down to 1 thing. It all comes down to practice. Let me give you some powerful
22:14 data that comes out of the NFL. For every 280 hours an NFL player practices, he performs for 1 hour. Let that sink in for a 2nd. For
22:26 every 280 hours an NFL player practices, he performs for 1 hour. Let's put that underneath the magnifying glass. In a 3 hour
22:38 NFL production, the most amount of time that a starter will play, if a player never leaves the field, the most amount of time that they'll actually perform from the snap of the ball
22:50 to the whistle is between 9 and 11 minutes. Can you believe that? For those of you that love watching sports and football, you're watching 3 hours of an
23:02 athletic production, but the only amount of time a player actually performs is between 9 and 11 minutes. Even though we're on the field practicing 16 hours a week.
23:14 But that's why we love sports. That's why we love watching the World Cup. That's why we love watching Olympics because you're actually watching careers that are built on the foundation ofShow more