There was a time when strategy documents carried real weight. I should know, as I’ve written enough of them in my time. A glossy vision, a long-term framework, a foreword from a minister or chairperson, all suggested seriousness.
Increasingly, however, it suggests something else – job done. That does not mean strategy is irrelevant. Quite the opposite. Good strategy is essential, but one that doesn’t ultimately change behaviour or outcomes is not worth the paper it is written on.
That may sound harsh, particularly to those who spend considerable time developing strategies. But for many businesses across Northern Ireland, patience is wearing thin when it comes to government action on various strategies.
Our issue is not a lack of ambition, and it certainly is not a shortage of strategy documents, or consultations. It is that too often we mistake the production of a plan for the delivery of progress.
That distinction matters. Because in the current climate, delivery is no longer simply an operational issue, it is a strategic communications issue.
Businesses, investors, employees and communities are judging institutions less by what they say they intend to do and more by what they can point to that they have done or are doing.
A 2025 court decision by Northern Ireland’s most senior judge served as a stern reminder to elected representatives about the risks of disregarding professional advice when making planning decisions (Jonathan Brady/PA)
The NI Chamber captured that mood directly in its call for 2026 to be a year of “delivery, not delay”. Its message reflects what many business leaders are saying privately and publicly that resilience alone is no longer enough.
Companies here have spent years absorbing higher costs, skills shortages, infrastructure constraints, planning delays and energy uncertainty.
They do not need more acknowledgement that these issues exist. They need evidence that they are being tackled.
Here, we continue to face an uncomfortable gap between what we know needs done and what we appear capable of doing. Take our infrastructure challenges as an example.
Wastewater constraints affect housing and development. Planning delays affect investment in renewable energy and grid capacity.
Roads, public transport, schools, hospitals, waste management and social housing all tell their own story of pressure and backlog.
Business organisations have called for greater certainty, faster decision-making, long-term capital planning and a more serious approach to the infrastructure that underpins competitiveness.
Yet the long-awaited Investment Strategy for Northern Ireland remains unpublished. Every month that passes without a final agreed framework reinforces the perception that Northern Ireland is more comfortable discussing infrastructure delivery than actually delivering it.
The contrast on the approach to infrastructure across the border is useful. The new Irish Government’s Accelerating Infrastructure Taskforce has moved the conversation beyond ambition and into the mechanics of delivery.
It identified a series of barriers to infrastructure development and set out specific, time-bound measures to address them.
Sean O’Driscoll, former chairman and chief executive of Glen Dimplex and a member of that taskforce, spoke recently at a NI Chamber event about competitiveness and infrastructure.
In planning terms, as Sean said, it isn’t that there won’t be proper testing of planning applications as that review process remains important, but that in doing so the process should respect facts and evidence of professionals over opinions.
Applied consistently and fairly he is confident that this will deliver certainty and confidence in resulting decision making.
We should heed this lesson here. Indeed, a 2025 decision by Northern Ireland’s most senior judge served as a stern reminder to elected representatives about the risks of disregarding professional advice when making planning decisions.
A Mr Duff, successfully challenged the granting of planning permission for dwelling near Limavady, where the permission had been approved by councillors despite contradicting the recommendation of professional planning officers.
In her ruling, the Lady Chief Justice quashed the decision emphasising the importance of grounding decisions in planning policies.
She stated: “This case exposes many issues . . . not least the danger if elected representatives proceed against the recommendations of experienced planning officials and planning officer reports without good reason.”
Ireland’s language and evidence of delivery on infrastructure, also offers a salutary communications lesson. It makes clear that action builds confidence while ambiguity and delay drains it.
When progress is publicly tracked as is the case via the recently launched Progress Ireland Thinktank tracker, when barriers are named and when time lines are attached, the message is that government understands the relationship between infrastructure, competitiveness and investor confidence.
The UK Government has been trying to strike a similar tone through its 10-year infrastructure strategy and planning reform agenda designed to get Britain building again.
Whether one agrees with every measure or not, the direction of travel is clear: fewer bottlenecks, faster decision-making, more certainty for investors and a stronger connection between infrastructure delivery and economic growth.
It is the recognition that strategy without delivery is no longer credible.
Such perception matters because confidence is cumulative and investors judge a place by patterns of behaviour. Can decisions be made? Can projects move? Can government departments align? Can political leaders hold a course long enough for the private sector to commit capital, people and time?
The strongest communication any organisation or country can offer is proof. Proof that a promise has become a decision. Proof that a decision has become an investment. Proof that an investment has become an outcome.
Kieran Donnelly, managing director at Morrow Communications
Northern Ireland does not need more strategy. It needs more follow-through. It needs barriers removed and timetables met. In today’s economy, delivery is not the final stage of strategy. Delivery is the strategy.
- Kieran Donnelly is managing director at Morrow Communications, a creative communications consultancy based in Holywood