Most businesses today have their fiscal year-end match with calendar year-end and if you are a franchisor or franchisee leader you’re probably finishing up right now on reviews, assessing your progress on goals, and thinking about starting the planning cycle all over again. I refer to this process as a “business spiral” because one thing is ending, one is starting, and there is a transition between the two. For a lot of business executives—people who have an active working style with hundreds of emails, numerous meetings, and countless conversations on a daily basis—this transition time can be a shock to the system, an uncomfortable period of ambiguous non-activity, and something to “get through” as quickly as possible.