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EPISODE DESCRIPTION
Featuring:
- J.R. Sloan, CIO, State of Arizona
- Ryan Murray, Deputy Director of Homeland Security and CISO, State of Arizona
- Doug Lange, Vice President of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels (& fmr. State CSO)
Summary
These seasoned leaders offer invaluable insights into enterprise-level thinking, cybersecurity strategy, and organizational transformation, while exploring how emerging technologies like AI are reshaping both government services and private industry.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How to effectively align IT strategy across large, complex organizations with multiple stakeholders
- Strategies for building trust and driving innovation in both public and private sectors
- Approaches to evaluating and implementing emerging technologies like AI at enterprise scale
- The evolution of CIO, CISO, and Strategy roles in modern organizations
- Best practices for cross-functional collaboration and relationship building
TIMESTAMPS
(00:00) Introductions
(01:29) Enterprise Strategy at Choice Hotels
(03:46) Managing 130 Agencies in Arizona's Federated Model
(05:30) Aligning State and Local Government Cybersecurity
(06:53) Business Alignment and Strategy in Public Companies
(09:19) Building Trust and Relationships Across Organizations
(11:03) AI and Emerging Technologies Discussion
(14:26) Choice Hotels' AI Task Force and Implementation Strategy
(19:44) Evolution of CIO Role and Customer-Centric Approach
(22:26) Future of CISO Role and Security Strategy
(24:23) Strategy Role Evolution and Leadership Changes
(26:04) Book Recommendations and Leadership Insights
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Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:00:00]:
Hey, what's up everybody?
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:00:00]:
This is Joe Toste from techtables.com and you're listening to The Public Sector Show by TechTables. This podcast features human centric stories from public sector CIOs, CISOs and technology leaders across federal, state, city, county and higher education. You'll gain valuable insights into current issues and challenges faced by top leaders through interviews, speaking engagements, live podcast tour events. We offer you a behind the mic look at the opportunities top leaders are seeing today. And to make sure you never miss an episode, head over to Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Hit that follow button and leave a quick rating. Just tap the number of stars that you think this show deserves.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:00:34]:
Today, we're thrilled to have J.R. sloan, Chief Information Officer for the State of Arizona, Ryan Murray, Deputy Director of Homeland Security and Chief Information Security Officer for the State of Arizona and Doug Lang, Vice President of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels. All returning guests to the pod.
Ryan Murray, Deputy Director and Chief Information Security Officer at State of Arizona [00:00:51]:
That's right.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:00:51]:
Love it. Welcome to The Public Sector Show by TechTables.
J.R. Sloan, CIO, State of Arizona [00:00:54]:
Great to be here, junior.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:00:56]:
For those who don't know you, because we do have a national podcast, just give us a quick intro.
J.R. Sloan, CIO, State of Arizona [00:01:00]:
I'm J.R. sloan. I am the CIO for the state of Arizona. I've been in that role about four years.
Ryan Murray, Deputy Director and Chief Information Security Officer at State of Arizona [00:01:04]:
Ryan, Deputy Director for the Arizona Department of Homeland Security. Chief Information Security Officer for the State of Arizona. Been in the role for about two years now. Mostly in public sector for the majority of my career. Born and raised here in Arizona. Glad to be on the show, Doug.
Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:01:18]:
Doug Lang, vp, IT Strategy, Choice Hotels I have been with Choice for about two and a half years prior. I met both of these gentlemen at the state. Former Chief Strategy Officer for the State of Arizona.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:01:29]:
Love that you highlighted the importance of enterprise level thinking, creating strategic models and frameworks to drive innovation at scale. In your new role at Choice, you were at Choice. I think you had just started two years ago too. But share a little bit about Choice's specific approach to innovation and how you're leveraging these enterprise strategies to shape Choice's technology investment priorities.
Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:01:50]:
I would say whether it's at the state, whether it's at Choice, when you're talking about enterprise level thinking in frameworks and scale, uh, it's still gonna come back to how do you drive simplicity into something that's really complex. Right. And I think something that we all talk about quite a bit, it's gonna revolve around people, process and technology no matter what you do. So you have that at the nucleus. But it's really about, okay, how do you Create a model where you can harness that energy and really create something that's repeatable and continues to evolve. So when you talk about innovation and choice, what I try to do is really say, okay, we're gonna take the emotion out of it. We're going to take the buzz out of it. There are a ton of technologies out there.
Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:02:32]:
How do you figure what ones are going to be right for us and when? So we really look at it in three categories. You have act now. So that's things we're actively implementing, actively leveraging. You have things that we're investigating. So that's things that are showing up in the hospitality space, showing up in the tech space. Tangible use cases are there. Not everyone's using them. You're starting to see value come.
Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:02:54]:
And we're trying to figure out, okay, is this value we want to bring to choice? And then you have monitor. And when we talk about monitor, those are the really buzzy things that they don't have a place in our environment now. They probably don't have a place in our environment in the next year or two. But we need to keep an eye on them to make sure when the time is right, we can pounce. And I think if you take that approach and you wrap a team around constantly reviewing it in that way, you're taking an ecosystem of thousands of types of technologies in saying, how do we prioritize what's best for our organization and where are we going to get the most value?
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:03:30]:
I love that. Junior, you talked about the challenges of collaborating across 130 agencies in Arizona's federated model. I'd love to hear you expand on that for our audience. How do you ensure the alignment between your IT strategy and the needs and priorities of all the agencies?
J.R. Sloan, CIO, State of Arizona [00:03:46]:
I think it starts with really seeking to understand what are their needs and what are their priorities. We've started back when Doug was at the state putting together an approach that really sought to take. We had an annual strategic plan submission process. The fact is, I don't know, we started, we got maybe 30 or 40 on a good day with a tailwind out of we should be getting a hundred plus. And we looked at the process and how that was working and maybe some things that weren't working so well in that and took a work from the customer backwards and say, look, how do we make sure there's value for you in this, that we can provide some structured feedback? So we now have a process where we're producing a report that goes back to the agencies where they can see not they can look at their answers and see, here's my answers relative to everybody else's answers. We can see what the key trends are, we can see what the, what the things are emerging and there's actually value for them in participating in the process. And I think that's an indicator of how we need to, how we have to get things done as a state is really to look and say, look, there's not a mandate that says you have to do what I tell you to do, but I want you to do the right thing. And so how do we help find what the right thing is? And a lot of it is going back to saying the mission of your organization better than I'll know the mission of your organization.
J.R. Sloan, CIO, State of Arizona [00:04:55]:
But I'm looking across all the organizations to say where are some things that we can do at an enterprise level, enterprise scale, and that we're all going to do better if we do it together than if we just keep trying to single shot things on the side. That's the thinking process.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:05:08]:
Ryan, in our previous conversation you mentioned the importance of understanding the challenges and concerns from the local government at the state level, counties, you name it, you've done the roadshow. Literally done the roadshow. How do you align the state of Arizona cybersecurity strategy with all the broad needs and priorities while also ensuring that the local government isn't left behind?
Ryan Murray, Deputy Director and Chief Information Security Officer at State of Arizona [00:05:30]:
Yeah. And I'll say not only do we support the same 130/agencies that JR's organization does from a cybersecurity perspective, we're also now supporting 300 plus local government entities through our cyber readiness program. Obviously, the scope and breadth of the entire state has a lot of challenges when trying to figure out how do we support them best. And one thing you mentioned, the roadshows, right. Going out there and actually talking to people, understanding their challenges directly. No one wants me to sit in my ivory tower in Phoenix and shout out orders to them and figure out, hey, you're going to go do this and I don't have the authority to do that anyway to JR's point. So being able to go out and understand where their pain points are and provide real concrete solutions to those challenges, everything comes together in a nice cohesive, poetic way. And I'll say we're looking at standard frameworks, we're looking at what the federal government is recommending.
Ryan Murray, Deputy Director and Chief Information Security Officer at State of Arizona [00:06:21]:
We're talking to our insurance providers to say, look, this is what we are requiring of our insured members. We want to make sure that you, as the state are able to Help them get to that point. Whether that's a city, a county, a school district, a tribal community, we want to make sure that whatever those requirements are, those challenges are, we're helping them to overcome them.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:06:40]:
Doug, how do you ensure that your IT strategy aligns with the overall business objectives, with choice, and what are some of the key considerations and challenges when it comes to driving technology initiatives at large, especially for a publicly traded company?
Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:06:53]:
Are you familiar with the concept of spheres of influence?
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:06:57]:
Yes. I didn't know if you were just going to. Sorry, is that rhetorical? Absolutely.
Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:07:03]:
So you get into a mode where it's what do you control? What do you influence? And then ultimately, what are you concerned with that you don't control or influence? And I think when you look at strategy, whether it's public sector, it's private sector, it's okay from an IT department, what do you control when you're talking about strategy, you absolutely control the guiding principles that you're running at and whether that's the technologies that you want to invest in, the development practices that you're going to roll out. That's something that you own. You own your velocity, you own your quality, you own the infrastructure, the cloud investments that you're going to make, right? So those are things within a strategy that you can really control and drive. You get into influence. Tech is really there as a business enabler, right? So the business is the lead dance partner. And I look at it really in two different ways. So from a business unit perspective, it's how do we get as close to them as possible? And not in the rears, but truly upfront. When they're ideating, they're grappling with challenges.
Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:08:01]:
So you can really be a partner all the way through. Then from an enterprise IT shop, there's one other scale of influence that you can really drive at, and it's where's the think tank? So think finance, right? Who's approving all the tech spend? Think corporate strategy. Who has the North Star in terms of where the organization is going to go? You aligning with those entities provides a whole different level of influence that then you can wield and drive across the company. Well, you get into concern, right? I would say this is something the state does really well. This is a habit that we are really building into what we do at choice. Understanding what's happening in the marketplace, understanding where the companies in the tech space are going, understanding where your competitors are going. And I think if you're constantly having an eye towards that. Do you control it? No.
Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:08:49]:
Can you absolutely plug that back into your strategy and where you're headed. Yes.
J.R. Sloan, CIO, State of Arizona [00:08:54]:
You know, Ryan shared about going out and talking with people on the cyber readiness program. Doug's talking about going out and meeting with and talking with the business unit. I was talking about the IT strategy plan and showing value back. But understanding the. What is really important to people and the thread through all of that is that we get things done through trust. We have to build trust with the people that above us, below us, beside us, and that is. That's how anything gets done.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:09:19]:
Ryan, in our previous episode, we touched on collaboration, but if you just want to speak a little bit to that on this episode.
Ryan Murray, Deputy Director and Chief Information Security Officer at State of Arizona [00:09:25]:
So obviously, again, nothing gets done without the relationships that we built. All of this is a team sport. It's something we have to continue working together on. And we've seen this time and time again where organizations that have tried to go at their own, that have tried to silo themselves, they come to ruin. Right. We want to make sure that we are protecting everyone across the entirety of the state of Arizona and truly defending the homeland right home. Cybersecurity is homeland security. And we take that message to heart.
Ryan Murray, Deputy Director and Chief Information Security Officer at State of Arizona [00:09:53]:
Heart. So I want to make sure that we understand, as we're talking to all of those members of the homeland, whether that's citizens, whether that's our stakeholders, that we're all coming together to support that common mission and vision. And that's not just to do the cybers right. Chris Inglis, former National Cyber Director, had an amazing conversation around this where he said, don't do cyber for cyber's sake. We are all here to support a broader strategic mission. Whether that's at the federal level, corporation level, our national level, our state level, or our city level, we all have a mission that we're trying to drive to provide services to whoever our customers and stakeholders are. And that mission, by and large, unless you are a cybersecurity company, is not cybersecurity. So we're here to support.
Ryan Murray, Deputy Director and Chief Information Security Officer at State of Arizona [00:10:35]:
We're here to provide risk management and risk mitigation strategies. We're here to help executive leadership to understand what that cyber risk is to their organization. Just as their CFO is providing financial risk, just as their legal team is providing legal risk advice, we're here to provide cyber risk advice and cyber mitigations. And the only way any of that works is if all of us are having that same conversation about what is important to us, how are we protecting it and how are we moving forward to drive that strategy?
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:11:03]:
I love that. Let's jump to our favorite subject, emerging technologies. And can anyone finish it? AI.
Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:11:11]:
AI.
Ryan Murray, Deputy Director and Chief Information Security Officer at State of Arizona [00:11:12]:
Take a drink.
J.R. Sloan, CIO, State of Arizona [00:11:13]:
Take a drink.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:11:13]:
Okay, J.R. looking ahead, what emerging technologies or trends are you most excited about that actually have a good use case and impact for state government?
J.R. Sloan, CIO, State of Arizona [00:11:23]:
So AI is definitely in there. I think what we've seen with generative AI coming forward, the types of automation that's going to bring, the value that we'll see in being customer centric, bringing things that we've seen delivered, I think in the private sector for years. But I think this is going to drive it more into the public sector. Going back to when Morgan was cio. At that point we talked about the fact that people wanted the type of experience that, you know, that they would get online shopping. Right. They want that same type of engagement with their government where it just works. And I don't have to go and hunt across 130 some websites to hope that I can find the link that gets me through to the service that I'm looking for.
J.R. Sloan, CIO, State of Arizona [00:12:02]:
I should be able to just find it organically.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:12:05]:
Was that his tell to go to Amazon, by the way?
J.R. Sloan, CIO, State of Arizona [00:12:09]:
I've probably factored in. So generative AI is going to definitely be a part of it. We're still seeing the benefits of going back to. AI has been around for 20 years now, but we're still seeing the benefits coming through and what it can do. Robotic process automation, it's all really about elevating the value of the individual, automating the tasks, taking work off of them that is, I'll say, better handled by machines and leaving the work to people that only people can do and that people will be the best at.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:12:34]:
I love that Ryan. AI, Gen AI and ML are increasingly being leveraged in cybersecurity. We touched on this a little bit on the last episode, but in case no one will listen, that last episode, touch upon it on this episode. How is Arizona approaching the adoption of these technologies within cybersecurity?
Ryan Murray, Deputy Director and Chief Information Security Officer at State of Arizona [00:12:52]:
Yeah, and I'll say probably the expectation is the cyber guy is going to come out and say AI is terrifying and the sky is falling and we should all be clutching our pearls and trying to figure out how to get past this. But realistically, I think it's another innovation, innovative technology that we could potentially use not only to help serve our citizens better, to better drive decisions around the data that we have, but also from a cybersecurity perspective.
Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:13:13]:
Right.
Ryan Murray, Deputy Director and Chief Information Security Officer at State of Arizona [00:13:13]:
We have copious amounts of data when it comes to cyber logs that we're collecting, incidents that we're responding to, even just pushing Patches to vulnerabilities that we're trying to address across our corporate fleet. Being able to look at that data and make meaningful choices around it, something that would take an analyst of mine hours or days or months to comb through and try to find anomalous or even baseline or malicious activity we can now do in potentially minutes or seconds. So enhancing ourselves, using us as like bolting on cyborg cybernetics to us as an enhancer, as a force multiplier for the things we're already doing, I think that's we're going to see the greatest benefit here. Obviously there is some potential risk and we're seeing the threat actors use the same thing, the same tools that we're also utilizing within our own environments. So understanding that our enemies are going to continue to get stronger, better, faster utilizing these tools, we need to be better, stronger, faster defenders as well.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:14:10]:
I love that. Doug, with the rapid advancement of AI, how is choice hotels approaching these type of trends? These emerging trends? Share a few insights from the AI task force that you established and the methodology you're using to evaluate and prioritize investments in this area.
Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:14:26]:
Yeah, so I'm going to say two years ago, Ish chatgpt all of a sudden burst on the scene, right? And it was buzzy and it was in the media and everyone was trying to figure out what it was. My head of architecture and myself were diving into all things Gen AI at that point in time there were like 11 companies we were looking at 11 turned into 200, 200, then turned into now around 800. Well, you go one click up and you get out of Gen AI and you just talk AI in general. So all the things Junior talked about, talking about 67,000 active companies growing every day.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:15:01]:
Right.
Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:15:01]:
And growing every single day. Right. That's not something that any one of us can really wrangle in and say, yes, these are the top three that we know are tried and true from Choice's perspective. What we did is we said, okay, number one, we're going to launch a task force so we have actual focus when it comes to gen AI. One of the first things is that task force is absolutely going to be cross functional from all corners of the company. But we're applying that same framework that I was talking about in terms of an approach to how we tack gen AI. So we're really looking at it in terms of three buckets. What are active POCs that we're implementing? Engaging, measuring and trying to see, okay, how do we crawl, walk, run before we deploy something across our enterprise, then you have R and D.
Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:15:44]:
So that's where Idea Funnel sits. And when I'm talking about Idea Funnel, think technology that aligns with our tech strategy. A use case that's relevant to choice in its customer base. And then the third would be an actual roi, because a lot of these technologies are fun to use and they put a smile on your face, but you still have to make the investment. Right. And that investment needs to be worth it. And we have a steering committee that's going to be going through all of these ideas, trying to figure out what are the top priorities for choice, what ones are actually going to be ushered into the POCs. And then you get into everyone's favorite topic, which would be governance and compliance.
Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:16:20]:
Right. Gen AI is not going anywhere. Our goal is how do we really define our security posture, our legal posture, all the artifacts that we need to get in place. So as we launch off through the next couple years, we're doing so on a solid foundation.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:16:35]:
That's great. Something you had said. Just there's just like an explosion of vendors who are offering these solutions. Just any thoughts on, like, how do you manage that evaluating? I think there's what, like 3,000 is just insane. Like every day there's a new piece of tech or product, like as a CIO or a decision maker, how do you handle that?
J.R. Sloan, CIO, State of Arizona [00:16:53]:
I think you end up having to narrow down the funnel through just, I'll say, the processes that we have, which is it's going to be going to the market, it's going to be doing our best job to express. And I try to encourage folks like, what is the business outcome we're trying to achieve? Don't tell me what the thing currently does, but what is the. What is it we want to get out of this and what is the value of that to the business? If we can express that, the vendor, partner, community, they'll come forward with solutions. And we're not going to fit 67,000 of them into a single engagement, but the best will rise to the top, and they do.
Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:17:26]:
And you just hit on a good point. I want to add on. There is just as much negative in that momentum, in that energy, as there is positive in the sense that it can be a really big distraction. So I think you need to figure out as an organization, what is your process and how does your idea funnel come in where you can still focus on your customers executing in the text that you're investing in? Because very quickly I think every single tech platform snapped in an AI component. I would joke with my head of architecture, pretty soon the recycling company is going to show up and say they also do AI and that's fine. But any good strategy still has to hit on execution. And in order to execute, you have to focus.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:18:08]:
Doug, reflecting on your career journey, what advice would you give to IT leaders considering a move between public and private sectors? You've done this full loop. Private sector, public sector. Now you're back. Love to hear any lessons or insights or any valuable takeaways you've had, no.
Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:18:28]:
Matter like whether you're switching sectors or you're switching organizations. I think it needs to start with just understanding your environment first. Right. Ask a lot of questions, listen, learn understanding your surroundings. But past that, from what I can see, when you're talking about transitioning from public sector to private sector, right. And where is that measure of success? I think just don't hesitate, right? You know who you are, you know your craft, you know what you're good at when you're talking about working in an internal organization. I think we've talked about this in the past. There's a level of urgency and it's different because there's revenues that are tied to ultimately product lines and successes.
Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:19:10]:
And with that there's an engagement that's expected. So I would say people understand the how, that's how they got into the roles they're in. They just need to lean in and engage and build those relationships and drive towards the outcomes.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:19:25]:
Love that. Gero. Throughout your time as cio, you've emphasized the importance of shifting from a utility mindset to a more customer centric, service oriented approach. As you reflect on your experience leading it in Arizona, what have been some of the most valuable lessons that you've learned on driving innovation, building trust and delivering value for the state?
J.R. Sloan, CIO, State of Arizona [00:19:44]:
I think it's being for the long game. You're not going to build trust overnight with people. You've got to follow through on your commitments. You can say, I want you to trust me and I have reasons why you should trust me. But frankly, until the rubber hits the road and it's a, either it's a bad day for them and you said I would be there, you got to be there and, or following through with, I'll say something when it's going to cost you because it's the right thing to do. So I'll say that in nothing wildly different than I'll say the private sector. Right. Because at the end of the day, we are dealing with people regardless of whether it's public sector or Private sector, there's different drivers in the environments where in the private sector it's going to be more profit and quarterly reporting and innovation is going to be probably a stronger driver There in the public sector it's wow, we're risk averse and we're all worried about the front page and so we tend to move more slowly and cautiously.
J.R. Sloan, CIO, State of Arizona [00:20:33]:
But there's annual budget cycles and it's use your money and if you don't use your money, it might not be there next time. And weird. We'll say weird things about how funding and budgeting and all those things work in government which crafts. Crafts behavior. So we engage with the people is really the most vital thing. And moving from a, you have to work with me because I'm the only option. That's not a great place to be and that's not the kind of organization that I want to lead and that's not how I want people to interface with me is okay, I'll meet with you because I have to. I'd rather have people engage with my organization and take the services that we have because they're valuable and they want to work with us.
J.R. Sloan, CIO, State of Arizona [00:21:06]:
And I'll say I want to move from a model where I have where we're pushing things out to where they're pulling us. Right. Because they see the value in it.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:21:13]:
Yeah, I love that. And bringing community together is why we have the tech tables event. So. Absolutely. So just as a quick follow up, how do you anticipate the role of the CIO evolving in the coming years? It's changing really quickly, but love to see in the next, it could be two to five years. How you think that role is going to change.
J.R. Sloan, CIO, State of Arizona [00:21:33]:
I think we're seeing lots of new things pop up around the cio. Right. We've got chief Data officers coming along line. We've had CISOs for several years now. We've got. You have chief innovation officers popping up. You've got. There's a recognology and a lot of these have a technology component.
J.R. Sloan, CIO, State of Arizona [00:21:49]:
So I think the role of the CIO is going to continue to be, I'll say you got to be a good broker of your services. You really have to be a good engager in terms of understanding the business and the people that you're working with. At the end of the day, it is always is going to continue to be about relationships. But you have to adapt your strategies and be able to be willing to give up pieces that you might have felt you were responsible for to someone else who's going to bring more focus to it and really be able to help. Frankly, if you work with them, you'll drive farther, faster. If you're going to fight it, it's probably just not going to work as well.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:22:22]:
I love that. Ryan, Curious how do you see the role of CISO evolving?
Ryan Murray, Deputy Director and Chief Information Security Officer at State of Arizona [00:22:26]:
Yeah, obviously the role of CISO has evolved in State of Arizona perhaps differently than most other states or even most Corporations run. Right. J.R. and I are essentially peers. We're both driving the same mission, which is the secure delivery of citizen services. And we saw presciently within the state of Arizona that maybe these should be two separate roles with different reporting structures. And I'll say part of that is going to be driven significantly by our push to protect not only state services, state information services, but also critical infrastructure. We're partnering very closely with our National Guard, other military organizations.
Ryan Murray, Deputy Director and Chief Information Security Officer at State of Arizona [00:23:05]:
We're partnering with our Department of Public Safety and law enforcement organizations. We've got an intelligence sharing group. So we're collecting, collating and curating intelligence around cyber attacks, understanding who our threat actors are either nationally or internally. And that's something that traditionally does not fall within an IT organization. Right? Building those relationships, further defending critical infrastructure from a true strategic defense perspective, defending the homeland. Right. Is something I think we're going to see continue to grow over time. We're starting to see whether it's the CISO role themselves taking on these tasks or compartmentalized or partner chief organizations that are taking on some of those roles, whether that's chief Security Officer, chief security Advisor.
Ryan Murray, Deputy Director and Chief Information Security Officer at State of Arizona [00:23:52]:
We've seen chief cyber officers in certain other states. So I think we're going to start to see this continuous evolution of what a chief Information Security Officer does, not just from a cybersecurity protection perspective, but understanding true risk to our organizations from everything and every aspect.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:24:10]:
That's great. Doug, curious around where on the strategy side, how do you see not only your role evolving, but being the former Chief Strategy Officer for the State of Arizona, how do you see that strategy piece evolving in the next couple of.
Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:24:23]:
Years in my role or on the public sector side?
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:24:26]:
D Both. All the above.
Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:24:28]:
I think from my perspective, I think in JR hit on this once, basically tech became not only something that you're doing in house, but something you're really leveraging the community and partnering out. Tech leadership changed fundamentally. Right. You're no longer getting a feather in your cap when you're talking about empire building and building as much in house with as many resources as you can. You have to take a business minded approach, you have to understand your customers, whether it's internal or external. And I think as long as cloud based technologies and partnerships play such a big role in your scale, roles like Chief Strategy Officer, Innovation officer, Digital Officer, in addition to the ones you rattled off are just going to become more and more prevalent. Because you talk about digital was basically one vertical in a tech strategy. Every emerging technology that you're talking about at some level touches on data and then a lot of cases digital.
Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:25:27]:
Right. So it's taking the funnel up a level and basically saying you're coming through these to touch everything else that you do. I think roles like we're talking about are here to stay. I think they're just going to continue to evolve.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:25:40]:
Yeah. No, I love what you said. It's you're getting above the business and being able to think strategically about what the outcomes need to be to actually execute and get done. That was great. As we wrap up, love to hear from each of you favorite book on organizational strategy, building high performance teams or leadership that you would recommend to our listeners and why JR you want to take it?
J.R. Sloan, CIO, State of Arizona [00:26:04]:
Okay. All right. So I became a fan of, I'll say almost any book by Patrick, Patrick Lencioni, one of the ones that I really drew upon and still use elements from it. And whenever I'm doing a recruiting or interviewing process is the ideal team player. So that's one that's always on my list of things to go look at.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:26:22]:
It's a great one. I had the chance to hear him speak live and it was great.
Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:26:26]:
It's cliche, but I'm going to go back to good to great. I think there's so much in that book that is applicable in. Not only that, but when you talk about talent, you talk about building high performing teams, you very quickly can become a victim of your own success where let's say you attract a really talented individual, they know they're executing at a level that's high. You still need to keep going. Right. And what I talk a lot about with my leadership and in my teams is we could be a 2 out of 10. We can be a 9 out of 10. We're still going to try to get a little bit better.
Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:27:00]:
And I think there's just so many things that book touches on how you just continue to try to rise and just improve.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:27:07]:
Yeah. Is there a specific takeaway? Like I'm thinking in my head personally right now, like obsessiveness is like a great trait if you're driving you like wanting to be better and better But I'd love to hear if there was a trait that stood out.
Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:27:20]:
I don't know if there's one trait. I was actually just covering this topic not too long ago with someone that I'm mentoring. Basically just becoming obsessive with not success as a principle, but about outcomes and driving towards continuous growth mindset. Yeah, Right. And I think there are so many principles in that book that come back to the idea that you could be Michael Jordan. But it doesn't mean that there aren't still ways that you're going to try to evolve who you are and what it is that you're doing to get better and better. And I think when you look at organizations, especially in the tech space, the ones that stay around are the ones that continue to evolve. Right.
Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:27:59]:
The ones that actually just maybe they were an industry leader and they just got stuck drinking their own Kool Aid. They get passed by. Right. I think that continuous growth mindset is huge.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:28:09]:
Yeah. No, I agree. That's a. I know in the public sector we talk a lot about innovation, but you actually. And innovation is actually very scary. When you try and do something new, what you don't hear is, like, the people talking about you or you don't hear about, like, the risk that it took. And like, when I started the podcast is my great example. I started on episode one and I had plenty of people tell me, this won't go anywhere.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:28:35]:
And on episode 20, it was the same thing. It's like having that conviction or even the live event. I was like, I have a vision for a live event. And I was like, I think I talked to myself at a coffee shop in Handelbar in Santa Barbara, and some guy next to me goes, that's a dumb idea. And I'm like, who is this guy? So I. You gotta have, like, conviction of, hey, you know what? I think there's an opportunity. I'm gonna stick to my guns and I'm gonna drive this forward. And so there's a lot of books around that.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:29:00]:
But I love the sports analogy.
J.R. Sloan, CIO, State of Arizona [00:29:02]:
It was episode 24 was the killer.
Ryan Murray, Deputy Director and Chief Information Security Officer at State of Arizona [00:29:05]:
That's the one that really set you off.
Doug Lange, fmr Chief Strategy Officer, State of Arizona & VP of IT Strategy at Choice Hotels [00:29:06]:
Yeah.
J.R. Sloan, CIO, State of Arizona [00:29:07]:
Yeah.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:29:07]:
What'd you say to me, Doug? I'm gonna bring it every single day. Orion.
Ryan Murray, Deputy Director and Chief Information Security Officer at State of Arizona [00:29:12]:
So I was going to go with something, again, cliche, and say, leaders eat last. Because I just love the mentality of empowering our people to do cooler things. But I'm going to put that on the shelf and I'm going to go outside the box and I'll be the hacker of the group and say cuckoo's egg. For those that haven't read it, it's not exactly a strategic planning book, but it talks about an incident that happened back in the late 80s where a cybersecurity incident happened. And it highlights all the problems that we're still dealing with now, which is silos and compartmentalization and organizations not working together, really driving the bad outcomes that we're trying to prevent from happening. If you haven't read it, go check it out. It's. It really helps to highlight the theme of all the conversations we've had today, which is community.
Ryan Murray, Deputy Director and Chief Information Security Officer at State of Arizona [00:29:53]:
We all need to work together. We need to stop pointing and saying that's not my responsibility. Go talk to Joe. That's not my responsibility. Go talk to jr. We all need to come together to solve all the problems that we're trying to do. And it's really talking about supporting preventing existential level threats from happening. So no big pressure or anything.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:30:10]:
No. I appreciate the three of you especially. I'm it's popularized and I think daring greatly by Brene Brown. But just being in the arena itself, right, Being the man in the arena or the woman in the arena and willing to go on the roadshow, I can imagine doing my own mini roadshow with the tech to Tech Tables. It's a lot of work, right? So taking down the road and a lot of long hours and the same thing that you've done Doug at Choice and JR throughout your career, the City of Arizona. So thank you for coming on the Public Sector show by Tech Tables.
Ryan Murray, Deputy Director and Chief Information Security Officer at State of Arizona [00:30:40]:
Awesome. Thanks Joe.
J.R. Sloan, CIO, State of Arizona [00:30:41]:
Thank you.
Joe Toste, Founder @ TechTables [00:30:42]:
Hey, what's up everybody? This is Joe Toste from Techtables.com and you're listening to the Public Sector show by Tech Tables. This podcast features human centric stories from public sector CIOs CISOs and technology leaders across federal, state, city, county and higher education. You'll gain valuable insights into current issues and challenges faced by top leaders through interviews, speaking engagements, live podcast tour events. We offer you a behind the mic look at the opportunities top leaders are seeing today. And to make sure you never miss an episode, head over to Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Hit that follow button and leave a quick rating. Just tap the number of stars that you think this show deserves.
