Discovering the Power of Personal Boundaries

Hi there! 🌟

So, let me take you on a little journey about how I stumbled upon the concept of personal boundaries. Now it took me a while to learn this, and they really should teach it at school, if not in every workplace. But hey better late than never, right?

The Chat with My Coach

It all started with a casual chat with my coach. We were talking about “red flags”—you know, those little warning signs that something isn’t quite right. I always thought red flags were just for relationships, but was I wrong! My coach explained that red flags can pop up in all areas of life, especially when it comes to our personal boundaries.

What Are Personal Boundaries Anyway?

Personal boundaries are like invisible lines that protect our mental, emotional, and physical well-being. They help us define what is acceptable and what isn’t in our interactions with others. Think of them as your personal space bubble, but for your mind and heart too.  A red flag moment is when one of those boundaries are crossed.  

 

My Aha Moment

During our conversation, my coach asked me to think about times when I felt uncomfortable, stressed, or just plain drained. As I reflected, I realized that many of these moments were due to my lack of boundaries. I was saying “yes” when I wanted to say “no,” taking on too much work, and not prioritizing my own needs. It was a real eye-opener! What are your red flags coach Colin asked?  I went back and thought it through, lack of being valued, lack of space to learn, lack of growth opportunities, energy sucking people that were incompatible with my core values.... There were quite a few.

Enter Viva Insights

Now, here’s where things get interesting. I decided to use Viva Insights to document my own red flags around learning, growth, and values. If you haven’t heard of Viva Insights, it’s this amazing tool that helps you track your work patterns and well-being. It was like having a personal assistant that nudged me to pay attention to my own needs.  One of the things is does is to allow you to confidentially check in on your emotional state, and reflect on why you  may be there.  You don't need Viva Insights for this, paper will do, but I love tech, and more importantly like to understand first hand how what we promote as a company can actually be useful in people's lives.

Documenting My Red Flags

I started by noting down situations where I felt overwhelmed or out of sync with my values. For example, I realized that I felt drained after meetings that didn’t align with my goals. Or when I took on projects that didn’t contribute to my growth. By documenting these red flags, I could see patterns and understand where I needed to set boundaries.

The Impact of Setting Boundaries

Be careful.  It may change your life for the better. Once I started setting boundaries, things began to change. I felt more in control of my time and energy. I learned to say “no” without feeling guilty and to prioritize tasks that aligned with my values.  "you can look after other's if you can't look after yourself" was something at the back of my mind. It wasn’t always easy, but the benefits were undeniable. I was happier, less stressed, and more focused on what truly mattered to me, and found others that aligned to this.

Final Thoughts

Discovering the importance of personal boundaries in my 40s was a game-changer. It taught me to respect my own needs and to create a healthier balance in my life. If you’re feeling overwhelmed or out of sync, take a moment to reflect on your boundaries. And if you need a little help, tools like Viva Insights (or even a journal) can be a great starting point.

Remember, it’s never too late to start setting boundaries and taking care of yourself. Here’s to a happier, healthier you! Take each day at a time, and know full well it's more than okay not to be ok, recognising it is your inner strength 🥂

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Feel free to share your own experiences or tips on setting boundaries in the comments below. Let’s support each other on this journey!

Dedicated to Debbie an old school friend, who reminded me they didn't teach us this at school.  

About the writer:

Gareth Jones is CEO and Founder of Lightrise Consulting (www.lightriseconsulting.com) a specialist Microsoft Partner providing business answers and solutions to improve ESG and people experiences.

Setting up a Dynamics HR/Finance/Supply Chain/Operations environment/project

 

How do you get your Sandbox up and running for Dynamics HR/Finance/Supply Chain/Operations?

Well firstly you'll need to log on and create a project on Lifecycle Services.  That's LCS for short.  LCS enables you to control, administer and manage your Dynamics project.

https://lcs.dynamics.com/

Once you've done this you can progress through the initial onboarding tasks:

For the Project Overview you'll need your supporting partner (or their MPN number).  Complete the details here with information on the solution you are migrating from,  the geo-region you are using for information governance. Microsoft also like to know the overall vision and goals the project.  Everyone should know what success looks like.  Finally you should estimate the final number of subscriptions needed for go-live, so go ahead and put this in at the bottom of the form.

 

The next part is the project scope.  This requires a considered approach.  It's best to have discussed your Environment Strategy before going into this part, but it's simple in it's operation.  Here we just need to tick the boxes for what will represent the technical solution scope, and if you are unsure, there's some convenient links to Microsoft Learn on the right of the page to guide you through.

Next who are the awesome people you'll be working with?  This goes into the section that defines your team.  Make sure you've considered the security.  Zero Trust is a strong approach.

 

In the next section (Define Milestone Dates) you'll need to define your project dates, so draw these down from your agreed internal dates.  After this it's time to link yourself up to DevOps, sounds scary, but this magical tool will make you stronger if it's set up well.  Providing you governance and IT control while also linking to support and task management by business process. 

Next you'll be guided to the next actions and checks for success.

Finally LCS will check if you've completed everything before you can move forward.

When you are ready, next you'll go through some decisions on the Azure infrastructure to use, before you finally get to deploy your environment.  Make sure to not include the Demo data if this is a blank environment.

 

Happy deploying!

About the writer:

Gareth Jones is CEO and Founder of Lightrise Consulting (www.lightriseconsulting.com) a specialist Microsoft Partner providing business answers and solutions to improve ESG and people experiences.

Purview - An AI Enabled, Information Manager's Dream

 

Years ago in an Information Manager role, I started to see the potential in SharePoint for managing information across an organisation.  It sounds boring, but like information quality, if you don't invest in this area, the value of your information decreases and your operations may not run as smoothly as you wanted.  But until until get through the boring bits, the exciting value doesn't come.  Now you can get there quicker.

Microsoft has been investing in this area for several years, and Viva Topics brought much of the information awesomeness together, before Microsoft announced it would be going again.  But what is this?  Enter stage left ... Microsoft Purview has landed!  and it has a new portal.

Purview provides those in data, and information governance and security roles the tools they need to get moving.  If you are in one of these roles I'd recommend taking an appropriate ringfenced look at what your information estate already has.  This way you can start to categorise your risks and start to manage them.  

 

A great extension to this is the Data Loss Prevention Policies you can add.  This provides you the controls to prevent unauthorised download of sensitive HR records or financial information with company wide policies to stop Dropbox, WhatsApp, Screen grabs, unauthorised shares and that sort of stuff.

..and the limit on only viewing data on your Microsoft estate is also over!  You can draw in databases like Oracle.

Worried about the proliferation of Copilot?

Keep watching this space because Purview and Copilot will soon be able to discover and secure all AI activity in Microsoft Copilot and other generative AI apps. Keep your data safe and stay on track with industry regulations in the Purview AI Hub.  

About the writer:

Gareth Jones is CEO and Founder of Lightrise Consulting (www.lightriseconsulting.com) a specialist Microsoft Partner providing business answers and solutions to improve ESG and people experiences.

Creating a business - Enabled by AI

Creating a business - Enabled by AI

Lightrise began in December 2021.   Having worked in HR for over 10 years, I've seen some pretty low-grade interactions between humans, and some entry level stuff missing from the professional skills of managers and leaders in the workforce.  So we've tried to structure things differently, and in our initial objective to build back better,  AI, ChatGPT and Copilot have been been with us since day one, changing what is means to be a manager and a successfully enabled and empowered AI employee.  

As an entrepreneur getting advice you can trust and bounce ideas around with is key.  Getting this for near free is even better.  But doesn't world's greatest library, 'the Internet' do that I hear you say?  Yes, but we're still using it for cat and dog memes, and the experience and style of communication of ChatGPT/Copilot is different.  More personable.  Prompting Copilot for the 100s of questions and challenges wanted to ask, and did about starting a business, I was slowly able to move through them all, knowing full well (along with awesome human coaches), that ChatGPT/Copilot was there for us in another capacity. 

The stock answer here at Lightrise is, 'have you cross checked it/tried it with Copilot?', often we try to create fast bridges to get from where we are, to where the end of our task needs to look like.  It magnifies what we also undertake in our HR and ESG rapid implementation approaches.  Copilot has enabled us the reduce the length of time it takes for all of us to create things, whether these are letters, emails, plans, pictures, presentations, or minutes.  We all do more with less, and more importantly keep a reasonable juggle of our daily routines which for many of us involves around caring for and leading our children.  

It's small steps, but creating a culture to learn, share learning and feel empowered to try things in the first place is super important.  We're able to do things with generative AI Video, Art, text content that would have cost us a fortune as a Small Business/ SMB only a few years ago.

Wellbeing 

The mind is not limitless.  If you haven't worked it out, I hope you don't have to learn the hard way.  Mental strength can be built, balance can be attained.  Viva Insights can be used to contribute to that, and provides you the type of AI insight and coaching advice you may expect from a good manager, checking that you are not doing too much of any one thing, helping you reflect on your growth.  When your company grows, the insights our your team's culture continues to get revealed anonymously to Senior Managers, helping you improve as you scale.

Keeping on top of goals 

Microsoft Viva enables us to see how our week by week goals contribute towards our mission, and strategy.  Our interns use the same experience to track their contribution to their journey and to ours.  The activities of a manager is automated with AI enabled prompts in the applications.  People are trusted to update the solution and keep it up to date with information, we believe in a transparent culture outliers stick out.  Among the many definitions of performance I would say going in the same general direction towards a company's strategy is key.  Easier said than done, but Copilot enabled Viva Goals helps us achieve it. 

Leave and absence

We use Dynamics HR internally as it's one of the HRIS Business Applications we help people get the best value from.  Leave approval has been automated for certain types of leave.  Instead we've focused on creating a culture where it's ok to go on leave when you want/need providing there is x weeks notice, automatic approval is in place.  (What's key instead is a project managers approval and the solution enables this)  

So which Copilot is for me as an SMB, or Micro entity?

I'd recommend getting started with Copilot on Bing, and Copilot Studio.  Some really great cost effective/free entry level products to help you explore.

From then on seek a license seller who can give you a discount on RRP of some of the other Copilots out there around M365 (try free pilots where they exist), and get your back office teams working on exploring them (do your data security checks first).  Probably a good idea to get your Cyber Security experts privately checking out Copilot for Security too.  Change isn't a one size fits all, so it's always worth taking a considered approach.

About the writer:

Gareth Jones is CEO and Founder of Lightrise Consulting (www.lightriseconsulting.com) a specialist Microsoft Partner providing business answers and solutions to improve ESG and people experiences.

Moving to the Cloud for Environmental Reasons

 Moving to the Cloud for Environmental Reasons

The cloud in this context is our Internet.  Which takes a vast amount of power to keep going.  Whether you have physical hardware depreciating in a room somewhere, or only some of your technical estate in the cloud so far, moving to cloud operations may be one way to scale your business and lower your impacts.

One of the advantages Lightrise have benefitted from in our growth is the trickle down impacts through our supply chain.  There is no one bigger vendor for us than Microsoft themselves who commit to the following goals

Carbon Negative: By 2030, Microsoft aim to be carbon negative, and by 2050, remove all historical emissions since their founding in 1975.

Water Positive: By 2030, Microsoft will replenish more water than they consume across their direct operations.

Zero Waste: By 2030, Microsoft will achieve zero waste across our direct waste footprint.

Ecosystem Preservation: Microsoft will protect more land than they use by 2025 and build a Planetary Computer.

Additionally, Microsoft invest in renewable energy, promote sustainability in our supply chain, and reduce their product carbon footprint. Their goal is to accelerate global progress toward a sustainable future. 🌍♻️

Being a vigilant, environmental scientist at Uni (and by heart), from the science I determined what trajectory we were on course for as a global civilization pretty early, and it's scary what can happen.  We are still living through the emissions from around 30 years ago, due the latency of effects.  The strong hurricane and typhoon seasons, the famines, drought and decay of today will be much worse in 30 years time. The only real way to create atmospheric change, and set the scene for terraforming new planets for humanity's universal expansion is to take negative climate gases out of the Earth's atmosphere at scale.  So it was great to see Microsoft moving towards this goal earlier this week with a company that specialises in carbon removal and sequestration 1Point5. 

On a business level moving to Microsoft Cloud enables you to benefit from Microsoft's environmental credentials,  but also make the most of easy access environmental reporting to drive your organisations environmental impact goals forward.   Information we've used in our ongoing B-Corp application preparation.

Copilot and machine learning are going to be part of the solution, and to a smaller extent the problem also.  They will use a lot of energy, but when constructed is against these design principals and objectives the future looks brighter. 

About the writer:

Gareth Jones is CEO and Founder of Lightrise Consulting (www.lightriseconsulting.com) a specialist Microsoft Partner providing business answers and solutions to improve ESG and people experiences.

ESG - For SMBs with Business Central

Dynamics Business Central is a great entry for moving away from Xero, FreeAgent, Sage and those sorts of tools. It's strength being the AI-enabled Microsoft Platform to enable you to transform and extend your business past finance into scalable Enterprise Solutions.

In 2024 we saw the introduction of Sustainability Management to Business Central, and as an Environmental Development Scientist at core, I have a new 💓

I've always been convinced there is a technical solution for the environmental challenges ahead, and the first thing we need to do is quantify the challenge. This is why the introduction of the European CSRD is so awesome.

When we quantify something we can manage it, and with this solution we have a strong foundation for governance and accounting.  

Being able to track your Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, and with relatively low cost rapid implementations with high value return entry points it's well worth checking out Business Central again.

Sustainability management overview - Business Central | Microsoft Learn

More from the Lightrise Library:

LIGHTRISE CONSULTING - Microsite (dmc-microsite.com)

 About the writer:

Gareth Jones is CEO and Founder of Lightrise Consulting (www.lightriseconsulting.com) a specialist Microsoft Partner providing business answers and solutions to improve ESG and people experiences.

Microsoft Viva Goals - Your Copilot enabled strategic goal setter

What would it look like if your organisation was all going in broadly the same direction?

Since 2022 atwe've been using Viva Goals to set our initial path at Lightrise.   We've even made sure our bonus objectives and internships are in here.   As a leader who places an emphasis on trust and results it's important to provide structure, so that as humans we can identify what joint success looks like. 

SMART objectives still seem to be a rare find in some places.  A SMART Goal is an objective/goal or Organisation Key Result (OKR), that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely.  Abiding to these quality standards is key to success.  Like any solution, if you put garbage in there, you'll get garbage out.  Put great things in however, and everyone knows the flows of the organisation where it's going and what you need to to to get there.  Easier said than done, in a larger organisation where challenges with performance and culture may also need to be considered to successfully roll a tool like this out.

Unlike many HR solutions, Viva Goals sits separately to your HRIS system.  If you have Azure Active Directory (recently renamed Entra) then you can set Viva Goals up.

   

Viva Goals provides true visual management and analytics, and as a lean SMB we wanted to remodel what management looks like and enable our solutions to take over the heavy lifting, save time, bring transparency and culture that matches it.

We sleep well knowing that Viva Goals is the one prompting the check-ins, and using it's latest Copilot features to suggest improvements, stronger measures and keep in constant contact with us as individuals and leaders to ensure we're on course for success.

Whether you are 3 in size or 300000, Viva Goals brings true scalability and low cost entry points to make it really easy to demonstrate a return on it's value.  

Thankyou Viva Goals, we've come so far thanks to your enablement of our company.  

Thinking about checking it out?

You may want to review your company's readiness by asking your IT department for the reports from the Microsoft Copilot Dashboard:

  

Are you Viva Copilot ready?  

About the writer:

Gareth Jones is CEO and Founder of Lightrise Consulting (www.lightriseconsulting.com) a specialist Microsoft Partner providing business answers and solutions to improve ESG and people experiences.