http://www.heartlandcircle.com
Let's go on a journey together...OUR VISION STORY
The year is 2015. Heartland has strategically aligned itself with organizations who in 2006 put a stake in the ground to commit that by 2015 our collective work has created a world that is sustainable for the majority of its beings.
As with the United Nations, which crafted their millennial goals for 2015, we have come to realize that we have no choice but create this transformed world together.
When we started the Thought Leader Gatherings in 1998, we stated that businesses and organizations are the most efficient conduit for global change. By 2015, new organizational structures have evolved and emerged to support this change.
Background
Back in 2006, in the midst of the global cultural paradigm shift, heralded by Buckminster Fuller and Marshall McLuhan, the world was gripped in an epic dilemma. One facet was political, spiritual and social chaos hallmarked by regional and global conflicts. On the other, clear grass roots indications of transformative behaviors were leaking through every global institution, as if magically instigated simultaneously by an unknown force.
For decades there have been increasing indicators of this paradox exhibited most dramatically with the rise of the USA as the global economic and political superpower. During its great expansion there developed a growing cultural polarization, between social conservative and progressives, rich and poor, religious fundamentalism and secular liberalism, and on and on.
Following the events of 911 and the 2004 elections the country engaged in a period of soul searching marked by an evenly divided electorate, increased levels of overt conflict driven by unprecedented fear. To many the world was threatening, the forces of “evil” have become manifest, all signs point to a clear and present danger for the American ways of life, while for a good many others the future is less threatening or even holds great promise.
We were between worldviews.
Heartland became a recognized global institution serving as a bridge between these worlds. In a time when the world population has been called to live into its collective heroic journey for its elevation from unconscious consumers to wise stewards of the planet, Heartland created a body of knowledge, programs and communities to help people connect more deeply with one another, and with their common concerns and sense of purpose.
Collectively we recognized that the most crucial time in the history of the planet are upon us. Crucial decisions were being made on a global level that will affect our future for generations to come. Thousands of initiatives reflecting civic, organizational and spiritual communities in action had sprung up in concert, being reported in the early adopter stages of the mainstream media.
“Communities of Engagement”1 sprung up in every culture, with corresponding principles and practices, held together by the information flow of the WWW and nomadic cultural troubadours carrying the principles of “Essential Conversations.”2 person to person. A true melding of the high tech/high touch continuum.
Heartland became an active catalyst and midwife in the birthing of this miraculous global shift through its foundational work in “convening”.3
Recognized by business, governmental, social and religious institutions for work in integrating personal and organizational transformation, HI was a catalyst and bridge between spiritual and temporal institutions on a global level through Thought Leader Gatherings4 and the Art of Convening4.
Looking back…
• How have we been effective?
• What influences have we made?
• Who have we influenced?
Heartland Milestones:
~ Heartland is known globally as the information and practice network for
transformational work on creating group communication, group process systems.
Being a bridge to reintegrate spiritual and organizational worlds through Essential Conversations. Since the Industrial Revolution, there has been a dichotomy between the spiritual and material worlds. That has greatly affected how western culture has created work systems.
~ Heartland has defined and created a professional niche for convening, as there is for facilitation, mediation, coaching.
~ Thought Leader Gatherings in 15 (English-speaking) cities acting as living models of Communities of Engagement for Leaders.
~ The Art of Convening trainer program has been embraced in various state governments and at the Federal level at the Dept of Labor where it is used in contract and labor negotiations as an effective means of mediation. Major breakthrough between AFL-CIO & automotive industry for setting long term contracts with agreements to transform the automotive industry to one of sustainability.
~ Heartland has been called in various high level negotiations between labor and business to help transform the traditional oppositional negotiations to a more integrated sense of service between two traditional foes.
~ Heartland was instrumental in convening the breakthrough to the national Teachers Declaration of Interdependence.
~ Art of Convening is a best-selling crossover business/ personal development book printed in 36 languages. With the Art of 2nd edition out and various “field guides” available, the AoC “brand” has become the road maps for navigating spiritual and secular life in the western world.
The book is about the principles of convening
~ The field guides are more practical. The field guides are in the field guides for various professions, disciplines. Different communities (AOC FG for community organizers).
~ AoC franchise including series and trainings. 500 trainers graduated from AoC Trainers program (10 per year)
Various AoCs: vertical markets:
coaches, consultants, professional trainers, internal managers, executives, teachers.
3 specific tracks: internals, non-facilitating externals, facilitating/convening professional
~ Collaborations/alliances with leading institutions, visionaries and activists of this time.
~ We are masters and practitioners of collaborative collective wisdom. We have found ways to expand our and others’ work simultaneously. We hold the notion of shared proprietorship.
~ Heartland will have been a major influence crafting a new in the outcome of the 2008 Presidential election
(descriptors for footnotes)
1We’re neither left nor right, neither progressive nor conservative. We allow a space for people to be together authentically. Then together we find the way of the new reality emerging, bringing together the spiritual/material, ethereal/grounded, spiritual/secular. Our work is to reunite, bring together.
2HI role via the TLG and AOC is the role of teaching, training, convening people to hold the space as fair witnesses, transformers, and catalysts.
3The role of convener is one who holds the complexity of the whole, knowing that each part is a representation of the whole, and comes totally from the source of love. Love In Action.
4Heartland’s action is the call to bring people together to discover the art of true relationship and interdependence by helping people to remember our essential interconnectedness.
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changing the world
March 2007 
Heartland Circle
