A waitress with a plan: want to stand out? Specialize in having ideas.

• Author: Wiesner, Pat
• Position: ON MANAGEMENT - Making business creativity strong

When things are in a knot and progress is at a standstill, everyone turns to give undivided attention to the person who says, "I've got an idea!"

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It happens all the time in every aspect of our lives. And doing it seems to be a function of a positive attitude about life.

My wife and I did some traveling by motor home last summer. It's a new thing for us, and it turns out to be a lot of fun. Just about every day we stumbled into an adventure we hadn't planned on, met really interesting people, and, if you'll pardon the play on words, we found Americana by the busload.

When you tell people what you are doing they seem to become very interested in helping you have a wonderful time in their part of the world as you move through. People went amazingly out of their way to do this, everywhere we visited.

We spent some time in the middle of Michigan with our son and his family. After, we couldn't make up our mind whether to go north or south around Lake Michigan to get headed back to Denver. We decided to go right across the middle of it! The map said there was a ferry that crossed from Ludington, Mich., to Manitowoc, Wis., that would take motor homes.

At Ludington we parked and immediately called the ferry line. (It was a big boat, about 500 feet long and carried lots of trucks, busses and people.) "We're full!" That was it. We were again faced with north or south around the lake.

Janet and I went to dinner at a little restaurant called Scotty's in Ludington. We had a nice dinner and tried to decide our direction, at times chatting with our waitress, Doreen. It wasn't overly busy, and Doreen eventually asked us the standard questions, where were we from, where were we going. We told her our story and asked her opinion on the north versus south routes. She said she would go directly across. We told her why we couldn't do that.

After some discussion she said she couldn't believe we couldn't get on the boat. Then she uttered those hopeful words to which everyone in a quandary listens: "I have an idea!"...