Sitting with the top 20 leaders of a company recently, I listened intently as they attempted to solve a very sensible business issue. They came up with a lot of very sensible suggestions that presented a rational path moving forward ... but nothing special. I knew the suggestions were sensible because I had heard them all before. They had been tried and tested a million times by others - including the group at hand. Problem was, as the group was already doing most of them, only incremental gain would be achieved.

So I suggested that instead of being sensible we try something really silly. I reminded the group about all the silly ideas such as Post It notes that had been huge commercial successes. Commercialising the silly idea of a glue that only sort of sticks made 3M mega bucks. And what about Disneyland - what a silly idea it must have been to have a fantasy world for adults and children that is the size of a town. Any sensible person hearing these ideas would have dismissed them out of hand.

Then of course there's the idea of doing away with tapes, discs and all the machines that play them and replacing the lot with a small cube half the size of a cigarette packet. 10 years ago the concept of an iPod would have been ridiculous.

Hearing this, the leaders decided to "humour me" and try silliness. So we did an exercise that took people out of their rational brains and into their creative brains. Then we gave everybody license to be as silly as they could be. And they were silly. Lots and lots of silly ideas came forward. Some were really silly - they were illegal - but in this part of the exercise it didn't matter because we were suspending judgement for the moment.

After about 10 minutes, we reviewed our silly ideas list. Through merging concepts, bouncing off ideas on the list and then applying judgement and discernment - ensuring everything was within the bounds of rationality and legality - the group found they had come up with a way of totally refinancing their company thus upping their performance by some $30 million. They also found ideas for three new technical processes that would save them millions over the next few years. All up, the exercise had taken about 15 minutes. Not a bad return on investment.

We have all been trained to be rational and sensible. Unfortunately, this often means being conventional, boring and underperforming. In a changing world, creativity is essential, not only to keep pace with change but to be at the crest of the wave. Creativity requires us to suspend judgement on ourselves and others and venture into new waters. This means being silly, being prepared to be seen as silly and being prepared to accept others' silliness.

Then of course we can step back into our rational sensible personas and ensure that everything we are doing is above board, on strategy and on the money. When we are prepared to operate this way, we can be hugely more successful and have a lot more fun.