Today is Australia Day and I’m in Wellington, New Zealand. Today I was awarded a Conspicuous Service Cross within the Australian National Honours System. The citation reads in part “… for outstanding achievement in project management, strategic reform agenda implementation, and the development and acquisition of an e-health system for Defence”.

I’m very humbled to be recognised with such an honour, because as almost anyone who has received similar awards will tell you the effort was not solely theirs. Many people contribute and they go unrecognised. This was most certainly the case for my award.

Naturally I’m also very proud to be recognised in such a way: more so because I used the Business Network Analysis™ methodology described elsewhere on this website and in my PhD thesis as part of my project management approach, and in particular for the e-health system.

I’ve almost finished my PhD and hope to submit it in April. One of the things I’ve been doing is updating my literature review. I’ve included in the review ‘Images of Projects’ by Mark Winter and Tony Szcepanek, which is published by Gower. Already my book is dog-eared and has lots of margin scribbles and highlights.

‘Images of Projects’ builds on Gareth Morgan’s book'Images of Organization' , which was first published in 1986. It also draws on Peter Checkland’s 1981 book 'Systems Thinking, Systems Practice'. ‘Images of Projects’ is not a how to book or a recipe for success. Rather it suggests alternative ways of thinking about projects, and to a lesser degree programs and portfolios of projects. Winter and Szcepanek suggest seven lenses: