Take No Prisoners is a free weekly memo from Scott Wintrip that explores how Radical Accountability prospers companies and changes lives. Instead of taking people hostage with outdated, heavy-handed, and ineffective methods of management, measurement, and motivation, Radical Accountability focuses on creating an unwavering responsibility for getting what matters most done.

Baggage claim at the airport is a losing experience for some people as they wait, without success, for their luggage to show up. While losing your baggage is a hassle when flying it can be a transformational catalyst for evolving two things very near and dear to you—your business and your life.

What is baggage? It’s anything that no longer serves you well at work or home. This can include many aspects of business, including processes, priorities, and even people, and those that are personal, such as routines, responsibilities, and relationships.

It’s hard to grow or improve even a great company when you’re carrying around things that don’t fit where you want to go. Losing Your Own Baggage is a process for spending some time in Business Baggage Claim, your chance to get rid of anything that no longer works for you or your company. You wouldn’t just watch your luggage go round and round on the baggage belt without picking it up. Nor should you tolerate anything that perpetuates the status quo when there’s an even better tomorrow just waiting for you once you make it happen.

Here are three steps to get you started on making baggage claim a place where better business begins:

Lift
Just like you lift your bags off the belt, positive change requires taking up and taking action on areas for improvement. Use the Business Practices Spectrum to categorize key business methods into the four categories. You’ll be using this information to know which bags needs to be lifted and those that should be left alone.

Learn
Look closely at what you catalogued as Repetitive Practices or Sustainable Practices. Whatever you do, don’t ponder “why” you’ve endured any of them. The why doesn’t matter, and ruminating on it keeps those bags on the belt. Instead, learn what you need to learn by reviewing each for what doesn’t work or work as well as you’d like.

Lose
If you were going to replace and upgrade your luggage with a set that had better features, you’d make a better choice by knowing what better means. The same is true in Business Baggage Claim as well. Using the information from the Learn step, collaborate with your team on designing a new process or method that addresses your definition of better.

The process of Losing Your Own Baggage has helped companies transform many aspects of their businesses. These include a stagnant sales process that became energized by cross-selling and added tremendous depth and diversity to the customer base. Another is when customer service stopped costing a company money and instead became a significant revenue generator for the organization.

This Week’s Radical Accountability Activating Action: Take some time to offload what got you here and take on what will get you to a better “there.” The result will be a here today, growing faster tomorrow opportunity all because you’re losing your baggage faster than any airline could even dream.