From strategy to story

The largest and fastest growing airline in Central Asia, Air Astana faced significant challenges to achieve profitable expansion, including rising fuel costs and increasing competition.

To deliver the innovation and efficiencies necessary for success, Air Astana needed to create and share a compelling story of the past, present and future – a vision that all 5,000 colleagues would be willing to get behind.

We hosted a day-long strategy narrative workshop for 20 members of the senior management team.

In a highly interactive session, we defined the key focus areas of the strategy for communication, exploring the different chapters that would make up the backbone of the narrative – underpinned with real-life examples.

Throughout this discussion, our illustrator captured the key points in a visually engaging eight-foot storyboard and message matrix, enabling leaders to see the combined result of their efforts. From this, we drafted the written strategy narrative.

From the narrative, we developed a conceptual theme and communications campaign. This received favourable feedback following its launch at a strategy town hall event for 500 managers. For SMT members, the workshop gave them co-ownership of the campaign in the future.

We are proud winners of two Awards of Excellence in 2019, at both the IoIC Central & North Awards and IoIC National Awards.

“This single version of the truth means the Leadership team are aligned with the overarching rationale of our strategy.”

Workshop participant from Air Astana