Heart
Most topics of group discusssion can be visualized as a series of layers. The helicopter goes up a layer or two to get the "big picture" or a wider vision. Looking at the forest reveals viewpoints of a higher order than looking at just the trees. From the vantage point of the helicopter, you only see the forest.
The Helicopter view is also known as going meta. Meta-learning is learning about learning. Meta-cognition is thinking about thinking.
Description
CONTEXT
"Context" is the Helicoper view from a higher altitude.
INSTRUCTIONS & VARITIONS
The facilitator may direct the conversation to the helicopter level by asking for similarities between objects. Things that are characteristic of an entire group of topics are generally meta.
Alternatively, the facilitator could use graphics to explain the higher-order process. A process map or social network diagram gives the Helicopter view.
Map the situation to show the connections. The network of nodes and connectors is at the meta level.
In some cases, the facilitator may be able to get the group to the meta level by simply asking about the structure of the ecosystem surrounding the topic in question.
Examples
Finding a bottle neck in a system
Understanding the patterns of communication in a network
Investigating processes instead of isolated events
Related patterns (what this pattern points to)
Add +related patterns
How related
Add +pattern relationship descriptions
Other patterns that mention or point to Helicopter
Resources
Douglas Hofstadter uses meta as a stand-alone word, both as an adjective and as a directional preposition ("going meta", a term he coins for the old rhetorical trick of taking a debate or analysis to another level of abstraction, as in "This debate isn't going anywhere."). This book is also probably responsible for the direct association of "meta" with self-reference, as opposed to just abstraction. The sentence "This sentence contains thirty-six letters," and the sentence it is embedded in, are examples of sentences that reference themselves in this way. See Wikipedia article on meta
Other
QUOTE
Letter from Isaac Newton to Robert Hooke in 1676: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."
Patterns are meta. Maps are meta.
If you cannot discern a pattern, perhaps you're dealing with a chaotic system. (Chaos has no meta.)
"One person's variable is another person's consonent." Jay Cross
Stage
Stories
In each of these cards is a story about group dynamics that relates to "Patterns+*tform" (add your own stories on Anonymous+Stories):
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