Further to my submission to the Productivity Commission Review of Executive Remuneration, I spoke to my submission on the 24th June 2009. Below is a synposis of my presentation.

My consulting experience has given me insight into the perspectives of shareholders, boards, CEOs, executive teams, and from the "bottom" of the organisation. I've been appalled at what

I’ve seen:
a. The generally poor quality of Board and management’s decision making – despite some outstanding exceptions and despite the best intentions.
b. Managerial subjectivity and its profound affect on shareholder benefit.
c. That shareholder are generally “powerless” to change the status quo relating to their investments.
d. Management is generally oblivious to, and disinterested in, the impacts of their decisions on shareholders.
e. 1980-90s experience and corporate collapses and malfeasance. The current financial collapse has underscored my comcern and lifted the scale of losses to another realm.

This caused me to take interest in the relationship between management and shareholders.

The issue of executive remuneration, as important as it is, is “merely” a symptom of a much bigger problem: that problem is, the way executive managers and directors relate to their shareholders or owners.

In the context of corporate activity, and based on my observations and research over many years, executive remuneration, as an issue, pales into insignificance compared to the hundreds of billions of dollars of shareholder funds wasted through managerial subjectivity, incompetence, poor judgement, ill conceived pursuit of guru theories, pursuit of executive managers’ personal agenda, misguided assumptions and inadequate corporate oversight and accountability. All of that despite management’s generally honest endeavours to “to do the right thing.”

Unless you rectify the core problem, executive remuneration changes will never achieve much to protect shareholders’ interests.

It is for that reason my submission is focussed on the Terms of Reference (TOR 4) item related to the relationship between the corporation and its shareholder: interestingly, also the topic of my doctorate research some years ago.

As long as directors and managers are free to define the outcomes of the organisation they manage, then shareholders will nearly always come off second or even third or fourth best.

Managers decide the projects that the corporation invests in, the initiatives they will undertake, the markets they will play in, the tools they will use, the philosophies they will adopt, and the corporation’s remuneration policy.

In other words, management determines how resources will be applied, what the organisation will generate, what benefit the owners of the business will secure, if any, and how they themselves will get paid.

All of these decisions commit the organisation to significant costs, and often, significant risk.

And these business costs are costs borne by owners and the business risk is also largely borne by owners. They are not costs or risks borne by management who initiate those costs and risks.

Some of these decisions focus on shareholder outcomes, but unfortunately, many do not.

More relevant still, managers determine the performance criteria against which they will be assessed and by which they will be rewarded.

This stems from a belief that the corporation, because of its legal status, is a separate entity from its owners i.e. the Social Entity view of the corporation.

This view argues that only managers and directors can determine corporate objectives. This view is arguably a significant part of the cause of the current financial collapse and a large part of the executive remuneration excesses.

Instead, directors and managers must understand that, despite the legal status of the corporation, they are nevertheless agents of the owners – and not the owners themselves.

Managers must apply their efforts toward the optimisation of shareholder objectives – that is their job and that is what they are paid to do – and that is the fundamental purpose of the corporation.

Critically, ONLY by knowing its shareholder objectives (i.e. its metrics – value, benefit, growth and risk), can an organisation align its activities toward their fulfilment.

Corporations currently make assumptions about their shareholder objectives that are demonstrably, logically and intuitively wrong.

These assumptions form the basis of performance management and therefore remuneration.

As examples of such erroneous assumptions, this research has found that:

• All shareholders do not have the same objectives
• A shareholder may have different objectives for different investments
• Institutions are not a proxy for small investors
• Shareholder objectives when known, will form a bell-shaped curve along each dimension of value, benefit, growth and risk
• Management assumes it knows what it is that shareholders want and they act on that assumption – but they don’t know without asking – and no one asks.
• Shareholders cannot run the company but they can and should define its outcomes: i.e. board interpreted shareholder metrics based on value, benefit, growth and risk – and what they want becomes the corporation’s Mission.

If one rejects this Social Entity view and replaces it with one that aligns the purpose of a corporation to the satisfaction of its shareholders’ objectives (the “Property” view), then a range of benefits are derived.

Some of these benefits include:

A strategy based on the market rewarding those organisations that are more focussed on delivery of shareholder objectives (metrics). Therefore, since you engender the behaviour you measure, a sane remuneration policy would dictate that the ONLY way for an executive to enhance his personal wealth is by exceeding shareholder expectations.

The way to do this is twofold (hence my recommendations):

a. Insist that all listed companies publish their shareholder metrics (value, benefit, growth and risk) in their annual reports;

b. For the government to facilitate and/or encourage the establishment of a Shareholder or Owner Accreditation Certification that would see listed companies seek accreditation on 4 sequential levels:

• First Level: Having established their shareholders’ metrics
• Second: Having embedded their shareholder metrics (as interpreted by the Board) into their Mission Statement
• Third: Having embedded the metrics into the corporation’s planning methodology (top-down - as defined in my submission)
• Fourth: Having demonstrated that corporate outcomes have delivered shareholder metrics

c. An organisation that is fully certified, offers existing shareholders greater certainty, potential investors and bankers lower risk. It also provides management with clarity and eliminates ambiguity regarding “shareholder satisfaction”. It therefore makes the management task easier.

Other benefits include:

1. Provides improved and focussed corporate, strategic and market planning systems as outlined in the submission. “If it doesn’t contribute to core metrics – don’t do it!”
2. Provides significant control over the negative impacts of managerial subjectivity.
3. Encourages a rational performance management system built around shareholder metrics rather than industry ratios. (Managerial career versus shareholder interests).
   Based on my research, I am of the view that the only legitimate corporate performance measure is the ability of a corporation to deliver its shareholders’ metrics.
4. Improves resource management and utilisation.
5. Facilitates a rejection of guru theories and “management flavours of the month” that don’t demonstrably contribute to specific shareholder-based outcomes.
6. Lastly, it contextualises stakeholder issues: no organisation exists for its non-owner stakeholders, but those stakeholders must be managed in a way that enables shareholders to “secure satisfaction.”
   It therefore minimises wasted shareholder funds relating to corporate, community and managers’ private activities that aren’t related to shareholder interests.
   If society or the government want corporations to become social change agents – then legislate for it and allow all corporations to operate on a level playing field. Otherwise, managerial subjectivity and self-interest spends owners’ funds on non-essential activities.
7. In relation to remuneration, rewards must be fair and reasonable for the effort applied to achieve required outcomes and shouldn’t, within reason, stifle personal ambition, motivation or free enterprise.
8. Provided the organisation is aligned to its shareholders, and shareholders have approved the remuneration policy and structure, then the Board should be able to pay executives whatever it takes, and is reasonable, to deliver the required outcomes. BUT the Board must be held accountable to its shareholders for those decisions.
9. Furthermore, any major attempt to interfere with the free market has the potential to cause major corporate disruption, market anomalies, distortions and manipulations.
10. Reasonable bonuses to reward executives for exceptional performance are acceptable – provided:
    · the organisation is aligned to its shareholders’ benefit; and
    · the bonus is ONLY based on exceeding shareholder metrics and not for any other measurement (particularly any management-derived goal or indicator or enabler, such as TQM, Innovation, or product concoction, etc (KPO versus KPI);
11. The role of directors is to interpret its shareholder metrics and to set corporate objectives, (i.e. the corporation’s Mission) and therefore to set the performance criteria against which management will be rewarded.
12. It is not practical or reasonable for shareholders to approve executive remuneration, except through the approval of a remuneration structure or philosophy that is applied and enforced by the board and for which the Board is held responsible.
13. Furthermore, even the best corporate governance disciplines will not ensure shareholder “satisfaction” in the same way that Quality Accreditation will not stop a disastrous product from being developed. Both are important but both are merely processes and don’t affect the core issues – what is the outcome that is required of the corporation.
14. One can’t enforce CEO/Exec remuneration as a multiple of bottom or average salary because “context dictates value”. Executives are generally smart and many will pursue self-interest knowing that average CEO life span is only 3-5 years in the one organisation. If you attempt to regulate remuneration, then executive focus will shift to personal gain and away from those things they are being paid for. (Management may restructure the bottom of the organisation to engineer the remuneration algorithm it wants, e.g. outsource or form into separate company.)
15. The corporation / Board must be able to modify remuneration arrangement under certain circumstances. The triggers for such reviews should be embedded in the employment agreement (e.g. major economic change, natural catastrophe, acquisitions, divestitures, takeovers, etc).
16. Golden parachutes should be constrained, if not banned altogether. If a parachute blocks an initiative that benefits shareholders (such as in a sale or divesture) then the parachute should be deemed as voided. Shareholders should not be constrained from dealing their asset provided it is within the law and regulations.
17. The concept of holding bonuses in trust for a given period (e.g. 18 month) is inappropriate if the corporation is aligned to shareholder metrics and the bonuses have been earned in exceeding those metrics.
    But if the corporation is not aligned to shareholder metrics, (i.e. not Owner Accredited) then holding bonuses in trust for a period is an idea that has merit and should be considered.
    Therefore, if executives are keen on “immediate” bonus rewards, then they will help ensure the organisation is shareholder-centred and will focus their own efforts on exceeding those shareholder metrics. In this way, both the executive wins and the shareholder wins.
    

In summary then, if you don’t fix and realign the relationship between the corporation and its shareholders, then tweaking executive remuneration will make little difference to the business owners, and may even harm them.

You know something is wrong with the process but you don’t know where to start. Here are some rudimentary steps that will get you going and some cautions and traps to avoid.

1. Clearly identify and quantify the outcomes (products, costs, volumes, quality, other corporate objectives, etc) that your existing processes are meant to provide. If you don’t have a strong understanding of the current state of your processes, then you will find it hard to identify the performance gap that the changed process is meant to remedy.

2. Identify all the ways that your existing processes fall-short of these desired outcomes. This may be difficult so it might be valuable for you to benchmark your process performance against other companies with whom you compete who are doing similar activity (processes) to you. However, be careful of chasing motherhood objectives such as “world’s best practice” or similar since you may not need to be at “world’s best practice” in order to fulfil you corporate objectives.
3. Calculate a theoretical dollar value of the shortfall between what "could be" and "what is". If your shortfall is, say $500,000 then the potential benefit to your organisation is huge if your annual sales are currently $1,000,000. You can theoretically improve performance by 50%. If on the other hand your sales are $50,000,000, then the time and effort (and cost) associated with changing the process takes on a different level of priority. Establishing the potential benefit in dollar terms places the proposed task into an organisational perspective.

4. Establish the extent of change needed. If the shortfall is substantial (more than say 5-10% of the output from the existing process) then it probably indicates the need to re-engineer your processes (among other possible remedies). If the variation is relatively small, you might want to consider some quality circles from within the organisation or a continuous improvement program to deal with small performance improvement issues.

5. If the value of the short-fall is high, then the benefit you may achieve by solving your problem will, in all probability, exceed your cost of undertaking the change. This calculation is termed your "value proposition for change.”

6. There are now two issues you need to address; do you have the authority to affect change by yourself, and how do you make the process changes indicated.

7. You are now in a position to start “selling” the concept of process change within your organisation. If you are the CEO, then you need to develop a Value Proposition concept document that you must get your Board to approve in order for you to move to the next step. If you are not the CEO, then you need to sell the Value Proposition to the Chief Financial Officer, the Head of Manufacturing or similar or the CEO.

8. If your organisation has not undertaken process-change before, it is recommended that you contemplate hiring process change consultants – of which there are many.

9. First step is to write a "Terms of Reference" document that captures what you want to achieve and what your minimum expectations of benefit are from a changed process.

10. Send the Terms of Reference and an invitation to tender to 5-10 consulting companies who are experienced in process change in your industry.

11. Assess their responses in terms of experience, methodology, cost and their credentials with similar successful projects. Talk to their references and don't take their work for anything. These companies are very "slick" and you must convince yourself that what they say is accurate and not just sales talk. If they provide a methodology that suggests that you can undertake the change yourself then you can consider doing so, but you MUST appoint an external, experienced project manager with authority to "make it happen". If for any reason you can't appoint an external "facilitator,” then appoint the consultant with the best response to your tender.

12. If you appoint a consulting company, make sure that "Knowledge Transfer" from the consultant to your staff is provided for. This will ensure that when you want to make the next process change, you will be in a better position (but no guarantee) to do it yourself. Also make sure that the consultants are kept to a strict time frame and that part of their payment (say 10%-35%) is made only after the new process is operational, for say one month. Check VERY carefully the person they nominate as their Project Manager as this person is critical. Make sure that the Partners who will be involved in the sales presentation are actually involved in the project. The Partner must manage the Quality Assurance aspects of the project and must commit to at least a once per week review of the Quality Plan and progress with you (the client) and the Project Manager. Partners tend to help "sell" the job then delegate the work to more junior staff - be warned.

13. Remember that effective organisational and process change requires the simultaneous management of people, process and technology issues. According to Ernst & Young, poor people management causes 90% of organisational change that fails. Your consultant may have a superb process change methodology, but unless they effectively manage the people (and other issues) then the change will inevitably fail to deliver its potential.

14. Establish methods to measure the on-going performance of the new process and compare performance with the “promises” made by the consultants. If there is a performance shortfall after implementation of change, make the consultant accountable for rectifying the situation. If they argue that “unforseen” factors caused the shortfall, then respond by saying that they should have engineered the change process to be flexible enough to accommodate most reasonable business issues. If their change process doesn’t allow for this, then it is a suboptimal process.

15. Develop systems to enable on-going monitoring and control of both the change process, and the final engineered process. Both are quite different and both need monitoring. Ensure your consultants provide a suitable and practical monitoring system/process/mechanism as part of their “solution.”

16. Develop a review process that takes the monitoring outcomes and feeds them back into the engineered process for on-going improvement. Ensure your consultants provide a suitable and practical review procedure as part of their “solution.”

17. Invite a senior consultant from the consulting firm who undertook the change process to sit on your process review team as part of their “after-sales” service obligation.

In summary, here are a few short tips about process change:

· Be very clear about how your target processes currently perform.
· Know the minimum benefit you need from undertaking the change.
· Know exactly how much the change process will cost.
· Know exactly how long the change process will take.
· Know what impact the change process will have on your people, technology systems and impacted processes.
· Make sure a very experienced person (team) is entrusted with the responsibility of making it happen. Give him/her (them) the authority they need. Make sure the CEO or Divisional Head sponsors the change process formally.
· If the change process is a big one, the project manager, if an internal appointment, must be dedicated to the project and must be taken out of existing line management structure.
· If the change process is a big one, establish a Project Office which reports directly to the sponsor, and not through existing line management.
· Be ruthless with consultants if you employ them. Make them commit to specific outcomes then hold them accountable for those outcomes. Ensure that part of their remuneration is based on the successful implementation of the project.
· Allocate resource to the monitoring, review and control of the change process and the re-engineered process.

(Speach given to the Institute of Management Consultants - Melbourne)
I have chosen to speak today on somewhat of an esoteric topic to the profession of consulting, yet it is fundamental to it, and all that we choose to do with our lives. I term it “Lessons From A Journey”

I don’t believe that anyone chooses to consult because they were born to it, or because there was some divine inspiration in their choice to become a consultant. I suspect that most people choose consulting because of the confluence of opportunity, experience, skill, circumstance, luck, and in some or many cases, pure desperation.

Similarly, when you’ve been in the industry for a long time, its rare to feel that you would like to keep consulting until the day you die. It’s more common to hear consultants yearn for retirement so that they can do the stuff they really want to. Whether they can or can’t retire is another matter entirely.

So I’ve reached the conclusion, reasonably I think, that consulting is merely a means to an end – a choice one makes in order to do other stuff and in order to fund other things – like security, a roof over your head or some of life’s extravagances.

I don’t live to consult but I consult to live and I selfishly engineer my consulting to suit my long-term life-vision.

In my opinion there are three elements of work and life:

1. Why we do what we do
2. What we do
3. What we want from what we do

Consulting is one option for the "what we do". I would like to concentrate at the two ends: why we do what we do and what we want from what we do.

I am sure that each one of you has your own basket of life’s experiences and hence lessons. Mine, like yours, come from experiences experienced over my life, but are also enhanced by 25 or so years of counselling others - helping them to, literally, "get a life".

I’d like to briefly identify the 20 key lessons that have significantly affected me, and affected why I do what I do and how that impacts on what I do. So what are the lessons I have learned?
1. You will never have more time left in your life than from right now till the day you die. There is no better time than right now to commence moulding and delivering your life expectations - delays and procrastination in developing and executing your life plan means less time to enjoy it. Being obsessed by your client's happiness, as prudent as it may be for your client realtionships, may in fact be a disservice to you personally, if it is stopping you from thinking about your own welfare.

2. No one will hand you a reward for living your life according to his or her attitudes and perceptions. Be true to yourself. The more you compromise your true desires, the more inevitable that those desires will never be satisfied.

3. Your self-worth should be generated by the respect, confidence and trust you have for and of yourself - and not from your perception of what others may or may not think of you. If you don't believe in your own self-worth, then why should anyone else? And when you do believe in your own self worth, then the opinion of others becomes a side matter and not the real game - "who cares what they think - they don't have the responsibility for delivering my happiness."

4. You create your own destiny. You have free will, because without it life is incomprehensible, and through this free will, you mould your essence. You are certainly affected by your context, but you are able to change the end-game. You can do pretty much anything you put your mind to. The challenge is to apply your effort to an area that matters to you.

5. Every one of your decisions, actions, thoughts, reflections, deeds and attitudes help build the person you are today. Life is a continuun and it has its benefits - and consequences. You are not the same person you were 20 years ago - and if you are, what went so horribly wrong to have stopped you growing?

6. Know what it will take to make you really, really happy. If you don't have a picture of what turns you on, then how will you know what to chase, or what it looks like when it arrives? You really can't afford to lose the good opportunities - they may be the only ones you get. Your challenge is to know what will contribute to your end game and what won't.

7. Develop a personal vision. Without it, it's like trying to get somewhere you don't know where, by a route that you have no idea of how to get on to.

8. Your personal vision should be your pole star that guides your decisions and actions. Use your vision to determine the suitability of initiatives, clients, projects and opportunities.

9. Allow your heart to mould your pole star, but allow your head to choose the best and most enjoyable path to it. Don't ignore your desires or your intuition. By the same token, don't leave the fulfilment of your desires to chance - plan for your outcomes, whatever they might be.

10. You must enjoy the journey; since some journeys are so long that some of us won’t survive to reach our desired destination. If you haven’t enjoyed the journey and have not reached your destination, then what were life’s sacrifices for? Life's challenge is achieving happiness happily. If you enjoy consulting, then that's fabulous provided it's taking you where you want to go. But if you're not enjoying it, and it's not giving you what you want, then find a better way to achieve your personal objectives and fulfilment through something that you enjoy.

11. Your dissatisfaction with what you are doing now can be eliminated if you put it in context - make it a stepping stone rather than a final resting place. Develop perspective. The here and now is temporary - you and your life will move on but it's up to you how and when and in which direction.

12. Work with the realities of life, the economy and society to achieve your pole star - rather than working against the tide. It's easier to cross a strong tide by swimming diagonally across it but with the current, than by heading straight into the flow.

13. Consider life's hurdles and disappointments as challenges and opportunities. Every experience, good or bad, has a "take-out" that you can grow from. As someone famous once said, "If you don't learn from you bad experiences, you are guaranteed to repeat them."

14. Learn to differentiate between the means and the end (the objective). Chasing the enabler detracts from the real purpose - consulting is the means; your happiness is the end. The question isn't, "How do I become the best or biggest consultant?" but rather, "How do I get the benefits from being a consultant, and what sort of consultant do I need to be in ordr to enjoy the outcomes from consulting."

15. Wealth follows happiness and not the other way around. Being wealthy doesn't guarantee happiness.

16. Only genuine happiness allows you to gain the appropriate perspective on what is wealth and how much of it is important to you. The privelege of happiness allows you to define what wealth means.

17. What goes around comes around. Never make enemies and always try to remain on friendly terms with everyone you deal with. You do not always know when you are being referred to or discussed and for what purpose. The quality of your legacy will determine in what frame those discussions take place.

18. Help others and you’ll be surprised how they will reciprocate. In time, you will be repaid many times over.

19. Allow others to help you: swallow your pride and focus on your pole star. Develop proactive or collaborative networks or go one step further, and develop a Visioning Circle. Who says you have to do it all yourself?

20. Revenge, retaliation and envy are useless baggage and will impede your progress to genuine happiness and contentment. Wasted effort is better focussed on your own fulfilment, and in any case, there is always someone out there bigger, meaner, tougher or in a better position to avenge thn you.

The bottom line:

· Change your personal reference point from others to yourself
· Learn to respect and be in awe of yourself
· Accept that only you can determine your own destiny
· Develop and define a meaningful personal vision
· Develop a strategy to make your vision a reality
· Be prepared to allow others to help you achieve your own vision
· And finally, in order to enjoy consulting, put it in context: understand clearly the role it must play to fulfill your personal vision, and then strategise to get it.

Thank you and good luck

When I think of my youth and my early adult years, I am able to identify a number of significant influences that moulded me as a person. They consumed my consciousness, my behaviour, my aspirations and my sense of well being – and dictated the bulk of my years.

Only in maturity have I been able to reflect on those years and determine whether my life has gone the way I wanted it to go and whether having lived those years, I am content with what I have experienced, aspired to achieve and actually accomplished.

The first of these influences was the need to feel that I was as good as my peers and that I could match it with them. That I was as smart, capable and appealing as they were - that I was fun to be with and someone whose company was sought over others. I wanted to be respected and admired. I wanted to be considered charming, intelligent, successful, and sociable and “a good catch” by girls, and later by women. I wanted to be and have what I thought one needed to be and to have in order to enjoy all the good things that life has to offer. What my peers and others thought of me was fundamental to the way I thought about myself. It was my way of validating my own existence. I had little respect for my own judgment, and desires, and felt that if everyone thought I was worthwhile, then I must be a worthy person.

Not to have this acclaim was to have failed. Failed not only in the eyes of my peers, but also of society and myself. I therefore existed entirely within the perceptions that others had of me. My reference as to whom and what I was, was external to myself and relied on the vagaries and foibles of others.

The second influence was the need to live up to the expectation of my parents. Not that they had anything but the very best intentions for me in their hearts, but they were human, and being human, had their own expectations, aspirations and desires for me, their precious child. They were of a time when parents “knew” what was best for their children. And the children, not having experienced life with all its perils and peculiarities, knew nothing – or at least not enough to know what was in their own best interest.

My parents had a view on good and bad, appropriate and inappropriate, on a suitable career and an unsuitable career, on good friends and bad friends, on a good marital match and a poor marital match, and so on. Not once did they ask me what I wanted, or wanted to do, or was excited about, or interested in, or who I loved and cared for. Not once was I able, without the fear of the loss of their approbation, able to pursue my own desires.

The third influencer was my school experience. I had the misfortune of attending an exceptional private school that had a firm view of what its graduates were to attain at the end of their schooling years. Unfortunately, the school was synchronized to my parent’s view of career and success – rather than to my own skills and interests. I was dragged through 12 years of schooling never entirely interested or immersed in the subject matter that so consumed every day of my life.

Not only were my peers and my parents assessing me, but I was being formally measured at school against a benchmark that appeared irrelevant to me. This measure was also used by my peers and parents to categorize me as a non-achiever. Once again, my self-worth was being moulded by other than myself.

The last and probably most obvious influencer has been my various employment environments. When a range of organisations employed me, I was forced to think and act in a way that suited the understandable needs and expectations of the employer. My self-worth was significantly shaped by the progress I made through the firm, the attitudes of my managers and even of my subordinates.

Performance measures, even poorly formulated ones, were used as the criteria upon which to rank individuals. These ranks changed the way people regarded other people in the firm, and the way that management regarded them for promotion and career development. I had to earn a living to support my family so in order to earn a living; I had to work for someone who determined what I did, how I did it, and how I would ultimately be rewarded for it. Failure to attract a reward equated to failure to fulfil a boss’s expectations. Failure to fulfil these expectations meant that people shared the view that I was “less capable” than others who could fulfil. My self-image invariably, and understandably, mirrored the perceptions of those I worked with and whose opinions were critical to my “happiness”.

Even when I was my own boss, customers, bank-managers, subcontractors, suppliers and others were influencing me and my behaviour and attitudes. Perhaps in the self-employment environments I experienced, these influences were a little more subtle than in the formal employee environment, but their effects were just as debilitating to my self-image.

It must be said however, that as debilitating (to the real pursuit of my happiness) as these influencers may have been, they also had their positive legacies. They enabled me to recognise the realities of other people: their hopes, objectives, attitudes and subjectivities and the reality and pragmatics of living with others in a community and a society. Through these experiences, I have been able to develop an ability to relate, communicate, endeavour and “succeed”. Succeed along the guidelines established by others – rather than succeed according to my own definition of success and happiness.

And it was that realisation that lead to the creation of the VisionCircle Movement and its attempts to enable people to seek their own definitions of happiness.