Jimmy Carter began his planning in the early summer of 1976, Ronald Reagan a year prior. The Clinton Administration, elected in 1992, lingered in naming its team, and as a result, took almost a year to staff its ranks.

A skilled Transition Team leader will set the general goals for a Transition, and then confer on the other team leaders working with him the power to implement those goals.

Temporary teams of trusted people are generally sent to all Departments and to major agencies of government to assist in planning and to acquaint the incoming administration with the civil servants and bureaucracy that will remain in place in the new Administration.

Naming a transition team varies with the intentions of the candidate; some candidates have been careful to name a transition team as much as a year in advance.

I was driving by an auto auction one day, and they were auctioning off a beautiful Hispano-Suiza. I started bidding even though I hadn't even signed up with the officials. The last bid was $50,000, and it was mine. And I thought, 'My God, what have I done? I've never spent more than $500 in my life.' That was the first one.

You have to address anger, fear, and then to think about what the alternatives are: hope, faith, a certain kind of brotherly love. And then you have to set yourself to cultivate those.

Most laws condemn the soul and pronounce sentence. The result of the law of my God is perfect. It condemns but forgives. It restores - more than abundantly - what it takes away.

At my company, we have 300 employees spread across offices all over the world, and I send them all a voicemail each morning with a message from me about why our work is important and a reminder about one of our values. I call myself our company's 'chief spiritual officer.'