ALANNAH CLARK
People as the
Future of Work
Message Stick Strategy
Message Stick, an Indigenous-owned ICT company, engaged us to help redefine their strategic direction and establish a stronger presence as a thought leader in the future of work.
Our research and engagement revealed that the key to navigating this future wasn’t just technology—it was people. This insight aligned strongly with the organisation’s values and emerging ambitions.
While Message Stick's core business focused on integrating technology into workplaces and providing related training, our team saw an opportunity to grow their impact — not only commercially, but socially.
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Through a combination of qualitative research, stakeholder engagement, and futures thinking, our team surfaced a simple but powerful insight: people are the future of work. This became the foundation for a dual-pronged strategy that aimed to both scale Message Stick’s workforce development offering and strengthen its cultural leadership in the corporate space.
The Problem Space
Despite a strong track record delivering ICT solutions across sectors, Message Stick faced several barriers limiting its growth and impact:
Low Brand Visibility
The company’s presence beyond its direct client base was minimal. Their marketing efforts and online profile were underdeveloped, making it difficult to position themselves as leaders in the future of work.
Under-leveraged Indigenous Identity
While Indigenous-owned, Message Stick’s cultural identity was not consistently reflected in its commercial offering, workforce, or community engagement — missing an opportunity to align values with impact.
Unrecognised Training Potential
Training was typically delivered through short-term engagements for individual clients. This limited Message Stick’s recognition as a contributor to broader workforce development in a rapidly evolving job market.
Lean Operations and Budget Constraints
With a small team focused on service delivery and a preference for low-overhead, high-return initiatives, any new strategy needed to be cost-effective, scalable, and easy to operationalise.
The Approach
Our research led us to two key opportunity areas:
Empowering a Future-Ready Workforce
Workplaces are rapidly evolving, with technology and automation changing the nature of work. This creates ongoing pressure to upskill employees and close capability gaps. Message Stick was already playing a role in this space — we saw a clear opportunity to expand it.
Our strategy focused on creating scalable, revenue-generating offerings that would allow the business to:
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Strengthen client relationships
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Broaden its reach
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Deliver long-term value
Collaborating for Social Impact
As an Indigenous-owned company, Message Stick carries a powerful cultural legacy — but this wasn’t yet a central part of their brand or market identity. We worked to embed this identity more deeply into their positioning and value proposition.
The second stream of the strategy focused on visibility, trust, and meaningful contribution — aiming to grow both brand recognition and social value.
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​Together, these initiatives helped Message Stick connect their business growth with broader social outcomes — reinforcing their authenticity and leadership in both commercial and community spaces.
The Outcome
This two-pronged strategy enabled Message Stick to:
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Expand from short-term engagements to longer-term partnerships.
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Build a future-ready, socially impactful brand.
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Diversify revenue through scalable training offerings.
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Amplify its Indigenous identity as a key market strength.
We also designed an accompanying Learning Management System (LMS) to deliver the microcredentials — ensuring the strategic vision was supported by an actionable, scalable product from the outset.
What we learned..
This project reinforced the importance of designing strategy that is grounded in reality. Message Stick’s ambitions were clear, but their brand presence and capacity challenges meant success relied on shaping a roadmap that respected where they were now, while still moving them towards bigger opportunities.
