Q&A with Micheline El Housseini Timbrell, CEO and Founder of Phi Management
From a one-person business to a leading boutique human capital consultancy firm with clients across the Middle East – Micheline El Housseini Timbrell has been leading Phi Management as Founder and CEO for the past 18 years. We sat down with Micheline to discuss her background and vision, the firm’s growth since its inception, and how Phi Management sets itself apart in a crowded landscape.
What was your background before setting up Phi Management in 2005?
After many years working in the leadership and assessment industry, I envisioned starting my own firm offering bespoke services that I felt were missing in the sector.
I had a unique and chequered journey that led me to become an entrepreneur, where, from a very young age, I learned the value of adaptability, tenacity and perseverance, and this experience was an indelible part of my setting up Phi Management.
I grew up in Lebanon during the civil war, which was a deeply challenging and traumatic experience for many people living there, a time marked by intense violence and political instability which affected everyday life. I was fortunate to be surrounded by a strong, loving family with three entrepreneurial siblings and this environment laid the foundation for my future as a business leader.
During these formative years, I was surrounded by strong female role models; my mother was the epitome of resilience, as well as being very wise and caring, and this influenced my character greatly.
As the founder and CEO of Phi Management, I've had the privilege of witnessing and contributing to the evolution of leadership and talent management in the Middle East for nearly two decades. My journey, shaped by resilience and a passion for executive empowerment, has led me to create and develop a unique approach to consulting that blends gold-standard international quality with deep regional insights in our offerings.
With the support of my family, I have been fortunate to pursue an excellent education. I graduated from Saint-Joseph University Beirut with a bachelor in Human Sciences and continued executive studies with Cornell University, London Business School and IMD. As I strongly believe in continuous professional development, I have attended further programmes I have a variety of professional certificates from internationally accredited organisations such as The British Psychological Society.
What was your initial ambition and vision for the business?
My expertise was in assessment and development and executive management – facilitating and designing training programs, assessing leaders and establishing assessment centres. While the concept I wanted to create wasn’t entirely new to me, my vision was to develop a premium, results driven management consulting firm.
This would be a bespoke offering of international quality, carefully tailored and localised for the Middle East market, addressing the specific needs of regional firms in terms of relevance and budget considerations.
How does Phi Management’s bespoke service compare to rival consulting firms?
I called the company Phi, from the Greek alphabet, because this Greek letter is often used in mathematics and science to represent “the golden ratio”, also a form of measurement. And what we deliver is practically measurable. Clients can see their return on investment, and whether their employees have acquired new skills, through the practicality, business knowledge and models that we deliver.
We are very well known for our customer relationships and our customer satisfaction rates are very high. A huge proportion of our new business comes through word of mouth, and recurring business from existing clients.
How has your service offering evolved over the past 18 years?
In 2005, Phi Management began as an HR training business, building on my background in facilitating and designing training programs, assessing leaders and setting up assessment centres for managers and employees.
Then, in 2016 I could see we had the potential and expertise to grow beyond being a training company and we made a strategic shift into becoming a management consultancy. We developed unique solutions for our clients, and we focused on assessment and development for executive management and organisational development.
This move coincided with a project we undertook in Saudi Arabia in partnership with a multinational company, and the announcement of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 economic reform plans.
As a boutique consulting firm, we are supported by a dynamic team of experienced consultants and experts, operating across multiple regions.
Can you describe Phi Management’s leadership and organisational culture?
We have a culture of continuous learning and feedback leading to innovation and improvement. As the CEO, I’m always learning too. I have a very high self-awareness of my management and leadership style. I encourage and listen to feedback, and I am tough on myself to get results. I never ask people to do something I wouldn’t do myself. We encourage a sense of humour and reward hard work and people who do best with us are highly adaptable to pressure.
That gives a sense of how good our people are, and our team at Phi is what differentiates us because we invest so much in them.
Is there anything particularly unique to the management consulting sector in the Middle East that you’ve observed while growing the business?
What I’m most passionate about is empowering Arab people in their professional lives and I’ve observed how incredibly driven, tenacious, intelligent, hard-working, and highly skilled we are as a people. It’s quite a joy working with so many top executives from across the Arab world and taking in how much we enjoy learning and engaging with other people. So many of us have proved ourselves all over the world.
As a mother of two, how have you managed to juggle family and work?
Of course, raising children is the biggest responsibility and challenge, with their well-being the priority over everything else. In the early stages of building the company, my family and I were living abroad in UAE, Qatar and Jordan, so we lacked the support structure of an extended family. It was challenging to run the business remotely, so I created systems to ensure everything worked while I was travelling somewhere else in the region.
At times, Phi Management felt like my third child. I think most entrepreneurs can empathise with having that emotional attachment to their businesses.
What trends in leadership development and talent management currently stand out?
Trends in the industry used to evolve every three to five years or so. But it’s changing more rapidly now, so the challenge is to stay ahead, underpinned by the right, well-thought-out strategic approach.
We focus on our unique service offering, ensuring our extensive experience, competitive advantage and added value are clear to the client.
As we look to the future, I'm excited about the opportunities ahead. The rapid evolution in trends of the consultancy industry around executive management and organisational development, the nuances of the tide of Gen Z entering the workplace, the increased focus on mental health and wellbeing, and the potential of AI in leadership assessment, all present new frontiers for innovation.
At Phi Management, we're not just keeping pace with these changes, we're supporting our clients to stay ahead of these changes, innovate, adapt and lead their organisations accordingly.