“I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine; the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.”

from The Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

Phillip M. Randall, Ph.D., CPG, Managing Partner, The Thorndyke Group, earned his master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of Michigan and The University of Akron respectively. He has worked as a teacher, manager, director, and vice president for a variety of enterprises, as well as, authored numerous publications. He is a seasoned business executive with expertise in for-profit and non-profit organizations, labor negotiating, human resource management, and operations management. Reportedly, his company's success depends on his undivided attention to one client at a time. To put it another way, being "fully present” implies being available when needed and attentive when not. According to Dr. Randall, taking on only one customer at a time allows one to deliver a service, resulting in a positive and long-term client experience.

According to Dr. Randall, one of the most important aspects of success is the concept of “shipbuilding”, which refers to the formation of high-quality relationships and understanding their intrinsic importance to one's success. This framework, as well as the talent it entails, is essential to his coaching practice and general success. He suggests that recognizing the importance of planning your life rather than waiting for things to come to you is essential

Consider the future in terms of the end result and make a strategy for a consequential and meaningful life. Take some time to consider what that might mean and suggest for you. Recognize that luck is a by-product of design and desire. Consequently, he advises everyone to go out and make their luck. As for client growth, surprisingly, he has not engaged in the general practice of marketing as such; instead, the majority of his business opportunities come from a satisfied client base.

Dr. Randall’s client's service model is based on a belief and understanding of whole-person planning.  The concept that each customer is holistic and has numerous needs informs this posture. Money, for example, is not the main reason of existence.  His approach begins with the client's physical and mental well-being. The concept is resident in a variety of services, ranging from client onboarding to client offboarding. This practice occurs while focused on organizational effectiveness in general and individual effectiveness in particular.

He argues that this point of view, as well as the need to engage in and maintain a learning mentality, must be acknowledged across the lifespan. As a general rule of practice, he suggests that one should not know the answer until you know the question; we're all in the process of learning and development and opportunity awaits.

In reviewing his life journey, Dr. Randall presents two experiences as significant contributions over the years. First, the work and paper that encapsulated the Nortel's initiative. My colleague, James Kochanski, and I wrote an article together in which we introduced the human resource function and its staff as equal business partners in the quest for organizational success, rather than being just an additional support service. Second, in 1994, via the initiative and foresight of Paul Fyfe, an Armstrong Jones(NZ)executive), “ I was invited to speak to the financial planning communities in Australia and New Zealand about my whole-person approach to retirement planning. His talk was part of a multi-city series that included all the major cities in both counties. This was followed by a twenty-year retrospective delivered in New Zealand in 2017, which concluded with the New Zealand government and financial planning community adopting the whole-person planning paradigm.

A recent notable accomplishment by Dr. Randall and his research colleague, Dr. Frankin M. Lartey, is the creation of a tool to assess employee engagement among remote workers. The tool is entitled-Enhanced Engagement Nurtured by Determination, Efficacy, and Exchange Dimensions (EENDEED). It is a Nine-Item Instrument for Measuring Traditional Workplace and Remote Employee Engagement (International Business Research 15(2):1-23, DOI:10.5539/ibr.v15n2p1.)