They would grow a beard if they thought it would help them win an election and they would not change their socks if they thought it would help them win the election and the transition went against that. It is now commonplace for people to think that it is the responsible thing to do to measure the drapes and figure out what they would do if they managed to prevail. And now the job of the transition project is to convince people that measuring the drapes and preparing to leave is the new equivalent of not changing your socks. Transition into todays topic for the panel. What it panel was about was like to transition the white house and this group of people have all walked into the white house on day one but another interesting aspect of the three people is that they have all walked out of the white house before the president walked out and to the executive branch where the mission of the administration also goes on. This panel will be a bit about walking into the building and what that expenses like because they have had that experience and how do you take on the responsibilities of running what the president is only and the top part of the full executive branch which is one of the Large Organizations of the world, or the worlds most powerful organizations in one of the most complex organizations, especially if youre interested in actually making a fit your ambitions. I will give you a brief synopsis if you missed the first panel. Leadership is a team sport. It starts at the top. Leadership is a team sport and practice matters. Regardless of whether or not you face the same game you think youre going to play, practicing together helps everyone. Those are topics that these three people have had, what they are just learned last night is that not only did lisa brown walked into the white house with president obama, she also walked out of the white house with ice president gore and clinton. Vice president gore and clinton. She has been on both ends of the spectrum. Clay johnson started planning to walk into the white house even before governor bush announced he was going to run for the white house. That is part of the reflection of then governor bush and george w. Bushs commitment, larceny personal commitment to making sure things are done properly. He not only walked into the building with george w. Bush, he walked out of the building with george w. Bush and walked out of the building with a different part of the presidency. He was Deputy Director of management. The management and management. The same job that lisa brown was assigned to buy president obama and put a twist on it to make her Key Performance officer. I will let her talk about what that means. Chris lu, like johnson was the executive director of the obama Transition Planning Group which means he was the guy who started way back before obama was a presumptive candidate. He was the guy who major to know what they were doing if they one and he is now midway through the administration, has walked out of the building on his own into the executive branch and if you anything about the agency, he is the person whose job it is to make sure ambitions of the secretary and ambitions of the president are the actual output of the agency. What i plan to do is ask a series of questions of each individual and author will have a check to, tell them because they all have a similar experiences. You have all walked into the building. You have all been part of the process before where your person was just a candidate and now the president elect and he walked into the building and did the job and what i would like you to do is think back to the end of the second week, not the first week, the second week and ask yourself if you could only draw on that twoweek experience, what thing would you tell your successor that would help them walk into the building with more confidence and strength. First i want to say thank you. Thank you for the bush library for hosting and the Moody Foundation for making all of this possible. I think both mac and just talked about this. You want to come in with a very clear plan and roadmap for what you want to do clearly for the first two weeks and there are executive orders unannounced and that time period, you set a tone very quickly. What you want to do is know when you walk into the door, we had a very clear set of we knew it was happening on day 1, 2, 3, specially for the first two weeks. I was to have a clear plan but also be willing to be flexible. We are always trying to balance is being proactive and josh mentioned this, we hope the next president will have a honeymoon period. And it is a remarkable time we can get things done. You want to take advantage of that. You also dont know what is going to happen. You also need to be able to be agile when something does happen so that you can respond to appear to it. I agree totally. I want to expand the common which is you need to take charge of the kind of president you want to be and want to be confident and comfortable and assured that you will be able to be. One of the first one of the things you want to do in the first two weeks . Educational things, statutory things, whatever you want to do. One of the things that could be risks if they showed their own we face or opportunities where our countries threat, unlike ever, their Economic Risks. Our country is in threat now, unlike the way it has been ever. And there are Economic Risks and health risks and so forth. So the president needs to be thinking, how prepared do i want to be to deal with a threat to our country, or a health risk, and so how well staffed do i want to be in the key areas in those departments, how well briefed do i want to be, how knowledgeable of the potential circumstances i might get faced with . Make sure that happens. The key is, the thing that is not secondary or should not be a variable but should be fixed is, what the president , with a candidate for president today, what kind of president do they want to do, if they want to be those first two weeks. Without a doubt, do they want to be . You think about how much time to i have between now and then that is not fixed. Time fixtures in terms of man days, do you have someone working on it . Two or three people, a three people man month, but if it is 300 am i devoting the resources, and my expanding the time, adding more days to the calendar them really exist by adding more people to really be prepared, have people around me in key positions to deal with stuff i will want to accomplish if nothing else, encourage . And those other things that might occur help from a National Security standpoint. Take control of that. That is the picture of success you want to accomplish, that you want to have painted it your two weeks in the presidency and own that and take responsibility. This is why the transition period is so important. You want to come in and hit the ground running. You want to start governing the minute the president is sworn in, instead of, where is the bathroom equivalent. Using that seven days or 34 days as best as you can, so that when you do governance like clay just described. You can immediately start acting and setting the tone for your presidency. Terry and not really 77 days, that is president elect. He did not start thinking about the transition on election day, right, chris . Started months ahead of time. Every one of those days, it is growing opportunity to be prepared. Chris we started planning in may of 2008, maybe actually april, before candidate obama had even grabs the democratic nomination. We understood the importance of planning in a very positive way. Planning a transition is one of these really unique experiences where you cannot ask for an extension of time. On the noon of january 20, you have to be ready. That time goes very fast. Many decisions you make during transition ultimately affect the success of your presidency. The key to all of this is athe key to all of this is understanding that the matter how great the planning is, you have to be prepared for the unexpected. In the beginning of 2008, the spring of 2008 we started planning, we had probably a dozen different policy groups looking at everything from education to health care to the environment, economy was one of them. He was just one of the 12 to that we had. By the fall of 2008 as the financial Housing Market started imploding, the economy expands to take over Everything Else. So you have to plan it also be nimble as well. Host planning is partly about the people you want to put in place and what positions they have and who is going to be the best fit for the president s ambitions, but it is also about the ambitions themselves, right . The ability to pin it were an unexpected event which like a crisis, Everything Else is already in place. It is easy for i think it is hard for people to understand is the president could actually say, something is on fire, and is really important, but i have got other things to do. Dont mess this up while i am gone, but i have got to do this other thing. So the president s ability to give it during a crisis depends upon the fact that notion, while he is focused on a crisis, the left of the government is not standing still. There is a general policy being pushed forward by others that depends upon him and that matter to him. So this planning stuff that you do is not simply, what are we going to do the first couple of weeks . I have to give a topic beach on this day four, but where is the president s agenda, how far advanced, how well organized . Now i have got to focus on this other thing that i know was expected. That is a part of the transition as well. Everyone agree with that . So if we set that out as an objective, first set out the president s agenda, and then how can we use that agenda to help him for the things that are unexpected or her, toward the things that are unexpected . Where does the personnel fit into that . The nice thing about the campaign is the ready group of people of the now president elect is now familiar with, but there are now all these other people like mac and josh talked about you to draw in from the washington community. You are not clear what their objectives are. This is a question for clay. You have this responsibility. How do you decide who the president needs from washington, and how do you decide who the president needs from the campaign . Clay the president is charged to me when he was governor. I was the appointments person for the governorship, which is the equivalent of president to personnel. You decide who to recommend to me to do the work we want to get done while i am governor or president. So for his administration, what does he want to do . That is the goal every we all want the people that do the best job of our desired work accomplished. And so he did talk about politics, done in a political environment, and is very important you have to understand first of all what you want the deputy secretary to do, or whatever or the assistant secretary overseer or the head of fish and wildlife for the parks and recreation, what do you want them to do . So the first thing you do as residential personnel, you go to the corporate policy section or National Security or whatever, in the white house and say, what does this Administration Want from parks and wildlife to take care of, or whatever . And the Health Department or hhs, what do they want . In the three or four years they will be in the particular job, we want them, we think they should accomplish this, this direction, south, north, reduce or add it. Then you confirm with them and others what kind of person they want to do that. A change agent, subject matter expert, management expert . You want someone publicly associated with the issue or somebody for very Different Reasons have no association because they will be a lightning rod . What kind of person are you looking for . And then you go out and you say, here is the target of the person i would like to recommend so i can explain to the president , this is the person we recommend because you want to get this and this and this done, this person wants you to get this and this and this done because they are behind that. So you do that and go out and find people in the various ways networking. So what happens to politics . We did not try to do with the political matter as well as the accomplished matters in the personnel office. Personnel was charged with confidence the matters, the other was political. Their charge was, make sure we dont do anything stupid politically. Or politically stupid. [laughter] clay anymore. So they would recommend people that were politically safe or maybe people that were sure to be loyal to the president , likeminded as the president and so on. Maybe they were people that did not come from them, but they would check their political background, people that worked in the community, who would be acceptable. It all started with what kind of person are you looking for that is best qualified to accomplish what this president wants to do . He was very clear charge again from the conversation with the president , find the person best qualified to get the work i, we want to get done while i am president. Terry so you do that without reference to a set of names . Clay without reference to a set of names . Terry you were describing the charge is, described the person we want, for the department of labor, secretary of labor, what does that entail, what kind of person do we want, all within the context of, we dont already know who that chris lu is . Clay you have to be disciplined to go and decide that. Somebody overseer might a as soon as you get to to finding them i can tell you chris lu would be a fantastic secretary of labor. Or i think chris lu would be a fantastic we would find out, what are the policy, what do the policy people, what do they suggest a labor be focused on in the first three or four years. And if chris lu is qualified to do that, has the skill set to do that, because it means working well with congress or doing this operationally within the agency or as a manager or fiscal or whatever. So you are not given a name. Your first job is to place these people in management positions. Maybe it did not happen with us. Terry on the other hand, you are directing, and the obama transition, you are directing 600 people that are looking at agencies that are basically agency experts, policy experts, people like that. Are you telling those people that they are the policy people that have an indepth understanding of what it is like to deal with Employment Training or Something Like that, because that is what they are interested in in the department of labor . Are you also saying that . Also keep in mind there is no way he will meet all of the cases to be the assistant secretary of training. Or do those people go to work only because this is their ambition . Lisa people join because they care about the government and to be honest, they hope they will go into the government. We were very clear you would not necessarily be given a job. We put together a Transition Team, we were very clear with folks that while we welcomed the participation, they should not necessarily expect a job. You hear about people drawn to, people prove themselves through the job. And then they are thought of when you are looking to see who will be your deputy secretary of justice. Terry did you guys start with did the obama team start with a profile . Lisa can i say at one thing . I dont know if it was mac or josh earlier, but we had our Transition Team was completely distinct from the campaign. So what we did was, we actually drew a lot for the agency. These were teams, individual agencies that tried to learn as much as they could very quickly so they would know the secretary came in, not only would they know what the president wanted to accomplish but also they would hit the secretary in the face when they walked in the door. Whether it was regulatory or legislative issue. We chose people who had previous government experience. If somebody had worked in justice previously, you knew they went in knowing about the department, knowing about the issues. You dont really want somebody who is trying to get up to speed on this set of issues. When you were talking about the balancing of the campaign and previous experience, often that was the half that would be from previous experience. Terry the people from the campaign, why is it that the transition planning people are sequestered from the campaign . Chris it is not that you are try to keep them separated. The whole goal is to win a campaign. They should not be looking over their shoulder, trying to cut around quarters at their next job. If there is a moment in time when they think about it, and truthfully, the skills one needs to win a campaign are often different than what it takes to govern. There is a lot of people that campaign and transition over into administration. Some people cant because it is not their skill set. Terry whose job is it to tell them their skill set will not land them in the administration . Clay everybody has a place. There is a key and appointments which is how to say no. And personnel types, we say the president makes the appointment and the others make the disappointment. [laughter] clay so the question is, how do you disappoint somebody . Terry sure. Clay you never say you something negative. You never tell senator soandso about his person is not going to be, you know, the king of something, a small country at his request. You never say your constituent, something negative. What you say is, something will happen, why, and i am very interested in your qualifications which is all true. Your ability to serve and campaign. And we hope that you will hang tight because of all kind of different roles. They can be challenged. Chris i think the challenge also is you have to hear out the different to people on campaigns. Your senior people, policy people all have a role. There are real challenges, what do you do with the 23yearold field organizer who has camped out in a battleground state for the last six months and has organized and really has given up a huge part of his or her life to help win . Trying to translate that skill to governing is a harder challenge. Clay i dont know how many of those people there are, but i think it is 15. There is no sense of limit, and it generally works about 1700. This lower level, very important job in key areas, the person who is camped out in ohio for six months and just did yeoman work and went up to ohio because generally is an ideal person to go and be this person over commerce and this person over health or whatever. And also that person i would expect to be assistant secretary for nuclear defense, it is just there is a fit for jus