Power Play: Visit your history

Power Players like to take a good look at where they’ve come from. It helps them keep perspective. Visiting their history is one of the best ways to get a view of the future and where things might go.

Go visit your history from time to time. See where you’ve come from when things were (or at least seemed) simpler. Taking the occasional trip down memory lane is clarifying, illuminating and sometimes even exhilarating to Power Players.

Make sure you remember your history. Don’t ever bury your history or, worse, try to rewrite it. Embrace it, visit it and most of all learn from it.

The story

I grew up in St Marys in the far western suburbs of Sydney. It was a tough neighbourhood and some of the kids I went to school with ended up in jail on serious offences.

My first boss told me that I should ’bury’ where I grew up, but I disagreed.

It was the best place in the world I could have grown up. It’s real life and it set me straight on a lot of things. More than that, the people who live in St Marys have more character and dignity than a lot of people I’ve met in the grown-up business world.

I hope I haven’t patronised St Marys and its people because I’m proud of the place. Don’t bury your history. No matter how good or bad, it’s still your own.