By Ken Siegal

Do you hate or fear change? Most everybody does, it seems, unless they get to decide what changes. As a witness to change the other day, I was amazed to watch it happen. Here's what I saw:

I wandered into a small store when the store owner received a call from a customer. He and his wife had been shopping there several months earlier, spotted something they (meaning his wife) really liked and he wanted to buy it as a surprise.

Problem 1 -- he was in Tennessee, the store was in Maine. Problem 2 -- he had been in the store several months earlier, and it was kind of a stretch to believe that the shopkeeper would remember him, or what he was looking for. Problem 3 -- he was trying to describe the item over the phone, and the store owner had a number of similar items.

The shop owner's solution? She took a few close-up photos with her iPhone, e-mailed them to the customer. He looked at the photos, decided which one he wanted. They talked, they haggled, they negotiated a price over the phone. She took care of the credit card transaction online, and promised the gift would be shipped out that afternoon.

Now a couple of things came to mind immediately. First, once you see it done, it seems like such an obvious solution. But the reality is that this shop owner was really smart. She was willing to push herself to find new ways to make the transaction actually happen. And it did work. And it was the first time she had ever done it, she told me afterward.

Second, she discovered a creative solution that could generate (there's that word again) a whole new way of doing business. Watching her, I was struck by what she did -- so easily -- and how difficult it is for many of us to make that leap. I'm not just talking about technology, but about learning how to adapt.

Every time I've ever changed schools or jobs or cities, there have been new problems, new challenges, but also new opportunities. Obviously this shop owner learned something about how to problem-solve in a new way.

What about you -- what's changed for you lately?

photo by Pink Sherbert Photography