Create change by being open to it.

I have about 6 interns that work for me and they are all from different walks of life, different ages, and they problem solve very differently.

I had a great lesson the other day as I assigned an intern the duty of adding up a huge Ziploc bag of sales tickets from clothing I had purchased from the thrift store to stock a closet for the homeless shelter.

 She looked at the project and asked if I had any specific way I wanted it done.

I said “use your amazing skills” which is sometimes code for; I don’t care how you solve this.

My team watched in amazement as she identified that the store just have 5 different prices and she quickly made 5 piles, added how many tickets were in each pile, did some simple multiplication, and had an answer that was solved to the penny in about 10 minutes.

The other interns and I were in awe. Every single one of us would have done the task ticket by ticket, double checked the math, and it would have taken all afternoon. That’s why we all avoided the task and why it was so huge of a bag tickets.

Astonished by the ease of this task to her method of problem solving reminded me that in order to create change in the world we have to ALLOW change into our lives.

Her new ideas showed everyone on my staff that there was great benefit from grouping like things together and then sorting them.