How To Self-Organize A KINS Network
To Catalyze A Globally Sustainable Economy

Mission.   Create a sustainability vision statement that is inspiring, daunting and measurable.  If your intention is to use KINS to take your town green and resilient, you can use something like this as a working mission statement:  'We are manifesting a green and resilient (name of your watershed here).'

Constituencies.   Identify some 30 diverse constituencies most important to achieving that vision and to creating a 'whole systems design.'   (For taking watersheds green, see the chart here for possible constituencies, such as organics, renewables, social investing, transpartisan politics, integral education, holistic education, green housing, socially-responsible business, integral medicine, healing arts, etc.)

Identify Members.    Select no more than 30 "key innovators" to be members (one from each constituency), including at least 5 philanthropists who can fund initiatives co-created in the group. Diversity in race, age, geography, wealth and social spheres should be designed in.

Candidates should meet the criteria below:

• Have high credibility in their constituency;
• Give back strongly in that constituency;
• Have reputation for integrity;
• Are known for advanced collaboration skills;
• Are conscious that we are all one;
• Are passionate about sustainability;

KINS Operating Principles.   Secure the agreement of attendees to operate on the KINS principles:

• Our strategy is generosity.
• A deal is a good deal when it is good for all concerned.
• Members contribute what they love to do and do well and little else, in heart-based rather than mind-based behavior.
• While members all have special expertise, none know how to manifest the mission.   Thus members sit at the table of unknowing and co-create the plan with each other, inviting Spirit/God to co-create with them for the highest good of all concerned.   All spiritual beliefs and religions are honored.
• Given the KINS' diversity, members understand that it will be normal to feel triggered.   Thus members agree that, when they feel upset, they will go within and ask what within them is asking to be healed.   They feel free to ask for help if needed and, after turning the upset into an opportunity, they may share the story of empowering themselves with the network.
• Everyone has equal time at the mike.
• All information is available to all the members all the time.
• Members do their best to return emails and phone calls within 48 hours.
• Cutting-edge information from each constituency is shared confidentially, building trust among members.

Founders' Weekend.  Schedule a Founders' Weekend on land stewarded by humans for the 30 to design the optimal network, serving organic food and including Earth meditations designed by those attending.  This is important for members to reconnect with Mother Earth who gives us life.  Each member tries to honor the interests of the constituency they are devoted to, suggesting ways their constituency can help specific other constituencies and requesting help from different constituencies as needed.   The goal is to design a picture of the future that works for all the constituencies by exercising members' imaginations, truly co-creating with each other and Spirit/God.  In this way, a whole systems design is manifested. While the design itself tends to be highly inspired, members themselves contribute basically what they love to do and do well, so that members are NOT exhausted by the network, simply inspired.    Once member can 'see' together the future they desire for all, it becomes possible to manifest it.

Implementation of Network Design.   Implement the Founders' design for the future that works for all the constituencies, with members self-funding the network, which may or may not need staff.   Governance is managed by consensus with members rotating facilitation duties, unless otherwise agreed.

Meeting Agendas.   Meetings give equal respect to the sharing of 'inner work' people are doing (spiritual inquiry of any kind) and related outer work that achieves the network's mission.  (See Presence, by Peter Senge et al, for a good description of a KINS-type process.)   Members educate themselves and each other about sustainability, analyzing which initiatives most deserve their shared support to achieve the mission they have chosen. Members implement the initiatives with the highest possibilities for all.

Academic Description of KINS