ABSTRACT
Helpful images, theories and methods show how individual parts and emerging wholes make sense together. Gareth Morgan explains how to use images and metaphors to see movement from the past into the future. Different images lead to different understandings of how the world behaves, and lead to different actions. This chapter presents images that reveal connections between actions and co-evolving wholes: human body; a garden; sailing at sea; and music, dance and the performing arts. Theories are 'ideas intended to explain something, especially the general principles that can be applied in different contexts'. The chapter explains theories that help to engage with complexity: leadership as sense-making; health as positive narrative unity; evolution as complex co-adaptation; and trusted relationships as a co-constructed sense. It provides four methods that build from Kurt Lewin's thinking about how to see initially invisible patterns within complex situations: rapid appraisal; backwards mapping; systems mapping; and action learning.
