"It's hard to explain but it has to do with your assumption of intelligence on the part of the audience and the way you make connections between seemingly different areas of thought or inquiry. Like drawing on Goethe and Gandhi to make a point about supervised injection sites.
My sense is that you help people see what is new about a familiar situation, and what is familiar about new or different situations in part by making connections that startle people out of their particular little mindsets. Like talking about social services, passive resistance and, say, quantum physics in the same sentence. In the end, it makes for a richer understanding of the situation and more creative, enduring solutions."
Kim Balfour
Balfour Consulting Group Inc