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BT has installed a senior partner from consultancy McKinsey to help shape its strategy in the first move by new chief executive Allison Kirkby to turn around the UK telecoms group.
Tom Meakin has been appointed chief strategy and change officer on an interim basis while the FTSE 100 company searches for a permanent holder of the new position, according to an internal memo sent last week seen by the Financial Times.
Kirkby took over from Philip Jansen in February and has the task of boosting the FTSE 100 company’s languishing share price, which has dropped about 17 per cent since the start of the year.
In the email, she announced the creation of a strategy and change unit and said the division, whose head joins the executive committee, would “drive the refresh of BT Group’s corporate strategy” and would “also define the next phase of our transformation” with a focus on business-wide change programmes.
Meakin is on secondment from his role as the global co-leader of McKinsey’s consumer technology and media practice, according to a person familiar with the matter at BT, who added that the companies had a long-standing relationship and that the consultancy had worked in various parts of the telecoms group in project capacities.
“Over the next few weeks, Tom will be working closely with myself and the ExCo to design the broader unit and make sure the accountabilities for both strategy and major change are in the right place, so we’re set up well to deliver across the company,” Kirkby wrote in the memo.
The division will bring together BT’s corporate strategy and development team and the group transformation and assurance team, according to the email.
McKinsey declined to comment.
The move marks the reintroduction of a unit similar to one that was folded into another department in 2021 after former chief strategy and transformation officer Mike Sherman left the company.
In the memo by the new BT boss, who has been on the telecoms group’s board since 2019, she also thanked employees for their insights about the company and said she had learnt that there was “a lot of magic and customer passion across BT Group, but also that everyone can see an opportunity for us to be more aligned, clearer and simpler in how we go about doing things”.
BT confirmed it was creating a new strategy and change unit to be led by a chief strategy and change officer, which it said was “a new role that will sit on the executive committee and report to our new chief executive, Allison Kirkby”.
It added that Meakin had joined as interim chief strategy and change officer “while we stand up the full unit and look for a permanent appointee” and that “only by working in a more co-ordinated way across BT Group will we be able to address the challenges we have ahead of us”.
