Green Mentors trains mid-market leaders to turn sustainability intent into projects that get built. This page is for executives; practitioners have their own track.
Your competitors are reporting. You could be moving.
Four weeks, three hours a week, and you leave with a circular project your board can approve β not a strategy deck, not a consultancy invoice, and not another year of measuring.
Endorsed by GO-TKM Β· Led by Dr Paul O. Olson, ISO/TC 323 expert Β· English, Norwegian or German
4 weeks
Start to finish
3 hrs
A week, one hour optional
4 modules
Facilitated, not lectured
β¬1,297
Per seat, all materials
The argument
The circular economy is emerging, not arriving on schedule.
Most sustainability planning is an extrapolation: take this year, subtract a percentage, repeat. That works until the ground moves β and for materials, energy, procurement rules and customer expectations, the ground is moving now.
Circularity is not a tidier version of the present. It is a different shape of business, and the companies that find its shape early get to choose their position in it. The ones that wait will be assigned one by their largest customer.
That is a strategic question, not a compliance question β which is why it belongs to you and not to your sustainability officer.
What you are probably being sold
A materiality assessment, a reporting platform, and a consultant who leaves when the invoice clears. Useful. Not a project.
What your board will ask for
One decision, costed, with a named owner and a date. Reporting does not produce that. A project charter does.
What this course produces
Your three circular hotspots, the standards that actually apply to you, and a charter you can put on the agenda.
What you leave with
Six outcomes, all of them yours to keep
01
An authentic purpose
One your people recognise as true, because it came from your business and not from a workshop template.
02
ESG as strategy
Positioned as competitive advantage and risk cover, in the language your board already uses for both.
03
Your circular hotspots
The three places in your value chain where circularity pays back first β named, ranked and sized.
04
A standards stack that fits
ISO 9001, 14001, 45001, 59004:2024, 59010:2024, PAS 53002:2024 and IWA 48:2024 β narrowed to the few that apply to your sector, size and value chain.
05
A way to carry people
Cultural change handled as leadership work, so the project survives contact with the organisation.
06
Impact you can measure
Indicators chosen before the work starts, so the result is provable rather than arguable.
How it runs
Four modules, four weeks
Principles-based and facilitated β not lectures. You work on your own company from the first week, and an AI learning agent keeps the thread between sessions.
01
Purpose that holds
Why your company is worth changing, stated so that it survives a hard quarter.
02
Strategic ESG
Where sustainability is a market position, where it is risk cover, and where it is neither.
03
Circular hotspots
Reading your value chain for the places where circularity pays back inside a planning horizon.
04
Systems and the charter
The standards that apply, the indicators that prove it, and the one-page charter you take to the board.
Before
Homework
Against the core model, so you arrive with your own material.
Hour 1
Input & provocations
Principles, frameworks and cases.
Hour 2
Facilitated discussion
Group format. Guided peer learning applied to your organisation.
Hour 3
Stay behind
Optional. For the questions we didn't have time for, or where you need a 1:1 discussion.
Included bonus
A year inside the TKM Boardroom
GO-TKM is the Brussels-based non-profit think-tank for tacit knowledge management, and its Boardroom is where senior people work through governance questions that have no published answer yet β circular value chains, knowledge transfer, board-level risk.
Your course seat includes access. It is the difference between learning a method and sitting in the room where the method is argued about.
Dr Paul O. Olson is GO-TKM's Global Executive Vice-President and an affiliate of the Boardroom programme; Green Mentors earns a commission on Boardroom memberships taken up independently of this course.
Boardroom sessions
Live, senior-only, under Chatham House rules
The GO-TKM standards work
Early sight of what is being drafted, before it is published
A peer network across Europe
Executives facing the same decisions in other sectors
Who it is for
This is for you if
β You are a CEO, CXO or senior director in a mid-sized business, and the decision is genuinely yours to make.
β You are carrying both the quarter and the decade, and you need the shortest credible route between them.
β A customer, a lender or a regulator has started asking questions you cannot yet answer with evidence.
β You would rather leave with one project than with a strategy.
It is not for you if
β You need a compliance report filed by a deadline. Hire a reporting firm; this is not that.
β You want someone to do it for you. The work is yours; we make it faster and harder to get wrong.
β You cannot protect three hours a week for four weeks. The peer discussion is the method, and it does not work part-attended.
"Probably the fastest turnaround we've ever seen."
Chairman of the board, health-insurance joint venture β where Paul was lead coach on the LEAN project and executive coach to the CEO
"Outstanding to help maximize value creation within management teams."
J.D., ex Senior Executive VP of a global airline; chairman of several corporate boards, Denmark
"A visionary that can fathom complexity and make that complexity understandable."
P.L., master practitioner executive coach, former VP Research
Who leads it
Dr Paul O. Olson, MBA MSc
Forty years in global business and executive development, a clinical doctorate in psychology, and an ISO/TC 323 expert seat on the committee writing the circular-economy standards this course teaches. He is GO-TKM's Global Executive Vice-President and lectures and supervises research at NSPC, Middlesex University.
His practice is organisational and cultural change β turnarounds, board work, and the conversations that decide whether a company moves.
ISO/TC 323
Expert, circular economy
Global Executive VP
GO-TKM, Brussels
EMCC Master Practitioner
Coach & supervisor
2 standards bodies
UN ECE e-business, then ISO/TC 323
β¬47 Β· 90 minutes Β· live
The Board-Ready Hour
One live working session. Bring your value chain as you understand it today; leave with your three circular hotspots named and ranked, and an honest read on which one your board would actually approve.
Worked live, not presented. Numbers capped so everyone gets their own material looked at.
Not ready for four weeks? Start here. Next dates announced to the briefing list first.
Enrol
Four weeks from now, you could have a project instead of a plan.
β¬1,297 per seat. All materials, the AI learning agent, and a year in the TKM Boardroom included. In-house delivery on request, in English, Norwegian or German β Oslo, Stockholm, Cologne, Brussels or London.
Cohorts are capped at 25β30 and announced to the briefing list before they reach this page.
Before you decide
Questions
Is this a certification?
No. It is a working course that ends in a project charter. Certification as a Sustainability Project Coach is a separate, voluntary step available after either of our courses β most executives do not take it, and nothing here depends on it.
How much preparation is expected?
About an hour a week of homework against the core model, on your own business. The AI learning agent carries the thread between sessions, so you are not starting cold each week.
We are already reporting under CSRD. Is this redundant?
The opposite. Reporting tells you where you stand; this decides what you do about it. Several participants arrive precisely because their first report made the gap visible.
Can we send a team?
Yes, and it works well β the homework becomes a shared reading of your own value chain. For three or more people, ask about in-house delivery instead.
What if the dates do not suit?
Join the briefing list. Cohorts are announced there first, and in-house delivery can be scheduled around your calendar.
Who else is in the room?
Senior decision-makers from mid-sized businesses across Europe, in mixed sectors, 25β30 to a cohort. Mixed is deliberate: circular thinking travels badly inside one industry's assumptions.