Ep.99 Zero to One: Building From the Ground Up with Doug Lange, VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels International and fmr. CSO for the State of Arizona

Joe Toste [00:00:34]:
Welcome back to tech tables. Actually, why don't you just give a brief intro on yourself, and then we'll jump in.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:00:39]:
Doug Lang, former chief strategy officer for the state of Arizona, currently vp of IG strategy for Choice hotel.

Joe Toste [00:00:46]:
I love that. So, Doug, you're dressed a certain way right now. Kind of looks a little Silicon Valley. Looks a little Silicon Valley, right.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:00:55]:
Okay.

Joe Toste [00:00:56]:
When you left the state, did you change your whole wardrobe? What happened there?

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:01:01]:
No, half my wardrobe just disappeared.

Joe Toste [00:01:04]:
Okay.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:01:04]:
Really? But we need to take a step back. We need to address something. When we initially met, I was podcast number 20 something.

Joe Toste [00:01:12]:
Yeah, 22, 24.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:01:13]:
So all your listeners and your audience need to know who was the one pushing you to go live and go in person.

Joe Toste [00:01:19]:
Oh, that was you.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:01:20]:
Yeah.

Joe Toste [00:01:21]:
He was right. He's 100%. I think maybe Tim was up next. I do feel bad because episode 22, I think, of the public sector, there might have been only, like, two episodes from the public sector. I didn't know the public sector was a thing. I think you were.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:01:34]:
Yeah.

Joe Toste [00:01:34]:
The second public sector episode, I didn't know what the public sector was a year ago. Is that shocking? I didn't know until I met Gary Brantley. And then I interviewed this guy, Brian Ben, who's the CIO for the Atlanta Housing Authority. People were just really nice. And the Doug said yes. I said, man, this is so cool. Chief strategy officer. I don't know what that is.

Joe Toste [00:01:56]:
So then I'm, like, researching chief strategy officer, and I don't even think I knew who JR Tim were during that interview, which is great. Yeah, it has been a journey. So now we're all the way here. I just released episode 89 or 90, and then we've got a number of episodes waiting for approval. I don't know, you might be episode 100. We'll see how it shakes out. But I'm excited to have you back here on tech tables and you worked with Tim and Jr. I'm going to put you on the spot.

Joe Toste [00:02:26]:
Before we dive in, what was your favorite part to work with JR and Tim?

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:02:32]:
Oh, God. That's a question I would ask just to divide them and make it awkward. No, they're both just great guys. I think we just had so much fun because I think we were aligned in terms of what we wanted to do, but we brought ourselves to our genuine selves, and I think we just had so much fun and laughed. Tim was just talking about it.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:02:51]:
Right.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:02:51]:
Those are good times when you hit the point in your career where you can blend personal and professional and be accomplishing amazing things. It's a good place to be.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:02:59]:
Yeah.

Joe Toste [00:02:59]:
And he does actually really mean that. We were talking and he just has nothing but stellar things. He actually stayed, I think, a lot longer with the state. Would you work five years there? Is that what it was?

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:03:10]:
Yeah.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:03:10]:
The plan was two to three. Three was on the long end, and I was going to be out, and I fell in love with it. I loved what we were doing. I love what we were accomplishing. Love the people ended up staying in five years.

Joe Toste [00:03:20]:
Love that. Okay, so today's episode is titled zero to one, building from the ground up, which is based on a book by Peter Thiel called zero to one. You might be wondering why that book, and it came from when we were chatting and Doug was talking about how much he loves speed, loves launching projects and innovating, and I just thought, wow, there's no better book than zero to one. It's great. And we were talking, well, you had actually said you're a zero to one kind of guy, right?

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:03:46]:
Yeah.

Joe Toste [00:03:46]:
Have you read the book, or was that just a thought that you had?

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:03:49]:
Oh, no, I've absolutely read the book.

Joe Toste [00:03:51]:
Okay, awesome. So we'll jump into it. So there's not a winning formula to success, but consistent success is normally found in people who push themselves. That was, I think, when we were talking, something I really picked up and I liked. And so I love to push myself, too. Love to push my basketball team. Could you maybe talk about how you're pushing now that you're out of maybe the slowness of government and how you're pushing that it strategy at choice hotels right now?

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:04:18]:
Yeah.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:04:18]:
I think right now my biggest asset is a fresh perspective. I think what I'm doing a lot of is just asking a lot of questions, asking questions about hospitality. It's a new space for me, our operating model. Just really trying to understand people's motivations. I think if you can truly understand someone's motivation, you can position yourself to really partner with them. When it comes down to it, the focus really right now is just understanding where does the business want to go and where are they trying to take things. Because it informs so much about our it strategy, our organization, our structure, just in terms of velocity and where do we need to scale, what types of technologies do we need to invest in, where do we want to be disruptive? I think we talked about this the last time I was on, but in my opinion, a great strategy comes from everywhere. It doesn't come from one person or one role.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:05:09]:
I'm just having a heck of a lot of fun talking to people and piecing it all together.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:05:13]:
Yeah.

Joe Toste [00:05:13]:
So when you said fresh perspective, what did you take from the state that you're now using right now at choice hotels?

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:05:20]:
Oh, God. I think the one thing that people don't understand, unless you've worked within government, is the complexity, and they look at it unfairly. And the other way around, which is maybe in the private sector, things are more advanced. So that means that everything must be more complex. And the truth of the matter is, if you understand how to navigate and be successful in government, you can be successful anywhere, because there are just so many different layers that you have to work through. And I think for me, in terms of what I'm bringing to my new role, it's just the focus on the bigger picture and the structure and who are the influencers and who are the decision makers and who are your customers, and who do you need to pull into the conversation? At what point in time?

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:06:05]:
Yeah.

Joe Toste [00:06:05]:
I love what you said about layers of complexity. And if you can kind of figure out if you could work in the public sector, you can make it happen anywhere. And I was thinking about Tim Roemer. He's got a communications degree. And I was like, man, I could be the director of Homeland security one day. There is hope for a history degree. And now I run a podcast. So the public sector is known for collaboration across state lines.

Joe Toste [00:06:29]:
But now that you're back in the private sector, how are you collaborating with industry peers versus maybe competing against them?

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:06:36]:
Which I think is, I'll be honest.

Joe Toste [00:06:37]:
With you, you want to compete with everyone.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:06:39]:
I do want to compete with everyone. JR knows this. Tim knows this about me. When I joined the public sector, it was one of the first things I realized, and I was surprised just about how collaborative. And it's something that I fell in love with pretty quickly, because you just have an endless network of people that are trying to support each other and get to whatever good looks like. When I joined choice, it was one of the first questions I asked, and I was given an answer of, we're in a competitive space at this juncture. And then I immediately missed that environment back in the public sector. But I think when you're talking about the private sector, you obviously have your network.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:07:14]:
You have any groups or associations you're a part of. You have the vendor community. You can have companies that work in the space of knowledge, but there's still an undercurrent of competition.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:07:26]:
Right?

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:07:26]:
So you can know your industry peers, and you're all going to hope that each other do well, but no one's given each other the answers to the test because ultimately that's what's going to define success for their organization.

Joe Toste [00:07:39]:
That's great. So I'm a big sports fan. I don't know how many sports fans we have here, but I'm a big one. So the Oregon Ducks, when they had Marcus Mariota, was the quarterback. I know he was probably one of just the greatest college athletes. The no huddle offense was incredible. One of the things we talked about was speed, and I love that and just crushing the competition. Could you maybe talk about the speed of execution? Because you have to execute right at the end of the day.

Joe Toste [00:08:03]:
Could you maybe talk about the speed of execution that you're able to enjoy now that was maybe missing in the public sector.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:08:10]:
Yeah, I think we touched on this. I just think when you're in the private sector, the motivations and the drivers, they're just so different. I think in the public sector, there's always going to be an undercurrent of trying not to fail versus truly trying to win and succeed. And I think there's a lot of great stories.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:08:28]:
Right.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:08:28]:
You highlight a ton of them on your podcast. So there's a lot of great work happening. But regardless of how successful you are, there's always that under that, you're dealing with, whether it's in your workforce or the greater administration or the community, where they're just driven by different things. It's risk averse environment. And I think when you hit the private sector, you have companies that are trying to evolve and innovate, and they're truly competing. It gets back to, are they zero to one or are they one to end? I think not only do you have the organizations that are wired that way, but you have people that are driving in their careers to accomplish as much as they can. And part of that is driven by passion. And the other part is the reality that there isn't a pension.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:09:13]:
In a lot of cases, at the end of the rainbow, they're really going to reap what they show, so to say. And they have a certain amount of time and they're trying to maximize their careers. So I think that creates a recipe for urgency. That's the word I would use. I think it's less about speed. I think you have a culture and you have an environment where urgency is just.

Joe Toste [00:09:33]:
Yeah, I love that word, urgency. As a small business owner, every day is very urgent, as you can imagine. And I was kind of curious.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:09:45]:
What.

Joe Toste [00:09:46]:
Would it take for you to come back to the public sector? Not now. Maybe it's ten years from now, 15 years. What would it take?

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:09:53]:
Oh God, that's a great question. Hey, I'll never say never right now. I'm loving where I'm at in the challenges that are ahead of us.

Joe Toste [00:10:01]:
But you've been there a hot three months, right?

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:10:03]:
Yeah, exactly. I need to be there a hot couple of years and really contribute to the organization. And this kind of dovetails just into government from my perspective, and things that can potentially be improved upon. And I can be more honest with you now because it's not going to come back on my actual role. I'll break it down into three areas. People process, technology. I think from a people perspective, government needs to change its value prop for a really long time. It's worked off the back of.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:10:31]:
Thank you for your. And the truth of the matter is the private sector is investing in civic minded individuals and initiatives now more so that it needs to be more than that. And I think they have the potential, they have the ability, but as they evolve and transform the value prop for the people, you're going to get more talents that are going to push and going to drive from a process perspective, and you tie this to speed, people don't really take a step back and realize that the operating model that is government, it's purposely built with a governor on it. So if you have your lawnmower, you have a go cart and you can go 5 miles an hour, maybe you go 10 miles an hour, you can get up to 15, but that's it. And that's intentional because they want to make sure that you're spending your money wisely and you're mitigating risk. And I think going back to that book, it's an environment that's going to hold out people that really want to transform and take things to the next level. And I think that can evolve because there's a lot of talented people in government, there's a lot of talented people that care and there's a lot of great work. And then from a technology perspective, all that being said, it's just finding ways to unlock the dreamers and just think big.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:11:42]:
So where you get budget for certain initiatives, you are thinking big. You're going as big as possible and you're trying to hit a home run with it.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:11:50]:
Yeah.

Joe Toste [00:11:50]:
So people process. And what's the third?

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:11:54]:
I went with technology, but there is three p's.

Joe Toste [00:11:56]:
I know, because we talked about this on the first episode, but we forgot.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:11:59]:
So.

Joe Toste [00:12:00]:
But we'll just plug it in whatever the third p is. But I did want to talk about people changing its value prop. I really like that a lot. One of the things when a lot of the packages were being passed for things like broadband and infrastructure and all of those bills, there was actually no money to give people raises, which I was like thinking, wow, how did they miss the boat on that that much? I mean, it was like trillions of dollars just passed. But not that there isn't good stuff in there, but when you're passing trillions of dollars in legislation, let's throw some cash in for the people who are actually serving and doing in the work. As a high school basketball coach, when you're the assistant, so I was the assistant three years ago, four years ago, you get paid zero. You get paid with a heart of love. And then when you're the head coach, you get paid a stipend, which is a heart of love, plus some coffee for a week.

Joe Toste [00:12:46]:
And then the second piece, when you talk about speed, I love that piece, too. I think I grew up constantly trying. When the first computers were really going mainstream, I was the one kind of hooking cords in, hey, this doesn't work. This works. But I have noticed in the public sector, the more interviews I have, the more people I meet people for whatever it is, they just have lost the ability to dream or they feel like they have to go ask their boss to go do something. And I'm pretty sure their boss would empower them to go do that. There's a lot of stuff that you can do that makes the work environment really good, being able to actually empower and delegate what you're doing to your team, give them the authority to go do that as people love ownership at the end of the day. But yeah, we need folks to dream, to go get, and then obviously, when you dream, you've got to go get some money.

Joe Toste [00:13:36]:
And I think the hard part is just how it is set up right where it's like, hey, we want to go do this, and then you've got to go pass legislation and the, it's public and people want to see where the money is going, every cent and dime. And then nowadays the news is just, the media is crazy and articles get written, and so it's tough. You can see the incentive for folks in the public sector who almost lose that ability to dream on some point. So we definitely want to move away from that. And we want to have people like Jr, Tim, and yourself in service. Now we have any questions for Doug right now? Do we have any questions yeah. Owen, I've got one.

Ryan Murray, Deputy Director and Chief Information Security Officer at State of Arizona [00:14:16]:
Joe, you mentioned earlier about the slowness of government. I would like to hear from Doug about his opinion on kind of that concept that you brought up in your question.

Joe Toste [00:14:26]:
So the question is you want to hear about the slowness of government.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:14:29]:
Yeah.

Ryan Murray, Deputy Director and Chief Information Security Officer at State of Arizona [00:14:29]:
So you talked about going from the slowness of government to private sector. Now, I've worked with Jr and Tim and Doug. That's not necessarily what I experienced, but I've never worked in the private sector. I'd like to hear maybe Doug's take on. Is that a thing, and how does that balance with his experience?

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:14:44]:
I have some thoughts, but you can go first.

Joe Toste [00:14:46]:
Well, I would say the biggest difference. So I run a small business, and if I don't work, I can't pay rent. So that's the level of urgency that happens, which I don't think when you don't have that, and you can't replicate that when you are an employee. But that's a huge difference. I'm speaking as a one two person shop, so not exactly the parallel, but I'll let you jump in because you have the actual public sector experience.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:15:12]:
Yeah.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:15:13]:
No, I'm going to go with his answer. No, I'm just kidding. I think it's important when we put together our strategy and what we ran off of, it was backed by the governor's vision and mission to run at the speed of it. And I think so much of what we were able to accomplish over the last five plus years was built on the back of we're not going to pay attention to how things have been done in the past, and we're not going to pay attention to the constructs of government that are necessarily going to slow us down, and we're going to move quickly and we're going to see how many points we can put on the board. And I think we were really successful at that. But I think the differences in what you're talking about are we did that with intent.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:15:54]:
Right.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:15:54]:
And some of the other people in this room might be doing the same thing with a very specific intent to do so. I think the difference is when you're in the private sector, you're in the commercial space, that urgency is from wall to wall. It just has to be because it's about competition. And is that company going to continue to succeed? Whereas government, the department of Revenue, may change, but some form of the Department of revenue is always going to exist, and same with Department of Transportation and so on and so forth. And I think it just breeds different motivators yeah.

Joe Toste [00:16:26]:
So, Governor Ducey, I love this guy. So most of you from Arizona, so he was the CEO of Coldstone Ice Cream. Now, my wife doesn't like Coldstone, but I take my daughter Annabelle. We go to Coldstone in Galita, in Santa Barbara all the time. And I'm always thinking, man, I would love to meet this guy one day. But he had that quote, the speed of business. And I love that. And when you have someone who is the CEO, I can only imagine the level of whether it's okrs or however he's coming in with metrics and he knows how to run at the speed of business.

Joe Toste [00:16:55]:
And I think if you don't have that experience, it's hard to. You just don't have that exposure. I think that's maybe the word exposure. When you have that exposure, it just takes you to another level. It pushes you. And I'm sure the governor pushes you.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:17:09]:
Jr.

Joe Toste [00:17:10]:
I'm sure he pushes. He's smiling right now, right? Yeah, I'm sure he pushes you, which is great. We want to be pushed. As a high school basketball coach, I push my team. I want them to be better, and I want my team to move at the speed of beating our crosstown rival. So anyways, awesome. So that was a great question, Owen. Thank you.

Joe Toste [00:17:26]:
I really appreciate that. And I love the public sector for the community aspect. So I don't want anyone to think, oh, man, now Doug's in the private. Yeah, Tim, go for it, Doug.

Tim Roemer [00:17:38]:
The state of Arizona. And I'm hoping he can explain to your listeners a little bit about a couple of things that always stayed with me and have become a little bit of my style as well, which is the speaker's journey, career journey series. If you can talk a little bit about why you put that together, who you had on it, what the outcomes and the success were within the department. And I just tell you, for me, it was my team got to know me in a way that they didn't know me before, and I was new and they used all the photos from it to make memes about me and to tease me. But it was like a great way to loosen us up. So I'd love to hear about why Doug came up with that idea, the success he had with it, because I think it's a model of success around the industry that other people could adopt. And then also along those lines, like Simon Sinek, the video you showed us on love one day to motivate us to be more passionate about what we do every day. If you can talk about some of those things and explain the why.

Tim Roemer [00:18:34]:
To go back to Simon Sinek thing.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:18:36]:
I think would be, yeah.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:18:37]:
And they both tie together. Tim knows this, Jr knows this. I'm people through and through. I enjoy to move quickly. I enjoy achieving things. I'm extremely competitive as a leader. I'm absolutely people first. I think your culture is so important, and you talk about the career Journey series, and the whole intent was really, it's getting back to that concept of just building a workforce of dreamers.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:18:59]:
And I think you have so many people that just, they see successful people out there, like the CEO of a company, and the assume that their life went very differently and they were only successful and they never failed. And we all know that couldn't be further from the truth. Everyone's a human being. Everyone struggles. Everyone has good days and bad. They just had goals and they put their head down and they worked hard and they stuck with it. And I think a portion of that career Journey series was just getting our workforce and our people to realize anything's possible.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:19:28]:
Right.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:19:29]:
They could take their careers in any direction they wanted to. They just had to be the ones to decide that they were going to go for it. And we took a real human element to it, because it's not about, I didn't want to have someone just come up and talk to their successes. It was more about who they were, their background, where they came from, and some of their failures and some of those points where life wasn't easy and they struggled a little bit and what they learned from it. And I think part of it was the component of really empowering our people. And then the other part of it, Tim actually touched on in his question, which was, if you're working on a team and you can get to know each other and really leave the titles and the experience and the badges at the door and really just understand what makes the person next to you tick and that they're a genuine human being. I think a lot of the toxic nature or the competitive nature within teams falls away because you realize that's a real person that has hopes and dreams and goals and aspirations, and they're struggling just like I am. And I think it definitely pulls people together and helps you bond as a group.

Joe Toste [00:20:29]:
Yeah. So Tim said there were photos of him that his team turned into memes. Hey, Jr, can we get a copy? I need to see these memes afterwards. Or if you've got something on your cell phone, I really want to see those.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:20:42]:
Yeah.

Joe Toste [00:20:42]:
No, I love that you're going to fail right. You're going to fail. How many people have ever heard of the inspirational Journey podcast? How many people have heard of the inspirational Journey podcast? Nobody?

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:20:52]:
Cool. Great.

Joe Toste [00:20:53]:
Well, that was a podcast I launched that flopped, like, eight years ago. I started a couple of podcasts. So, yeah, no one ever heard of it. You make mistakes, you learn and you grow, and you just try to keep getting better. Number two, Simon Sinek.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:21:06]:
Yeah.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:21:06]:
So along the same lines, it just comes down to being open and being vulnerable. And I think so many times, as a leader, and I would say more in an antiquated model, you think that you need to act a certain way, walk a certain way, talk a certain way. And I think for me, it's always been about just being who I am and being open and sharing. And through that, in building the team, just finding different things that I'm passionate about and sharing my. And I think that unlocks things in others. And I think we built an environment where diversity was big, and we didn't want 100 of the same people. We wanted people with different skills, different experiences, different backgrounds that were passionate about different things. And the video I shared resonated with me and a lot of my beliefs about a lot of different things.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:21:52]:
But I think the point was just, you put yourself out there, and that gives someone the courage to put themselves out there, and then you just continue to learn more and more about each other.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:22:00]:
Great.

Joe Toste [00:22:01]:
Doug, thank you for coming on tech tables.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:22:02]:
Appreciate it.

Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:22:03]:
Thank you for having me.