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SOPs

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How We Use This System
Command Center operator manual
approved
Owner
Curtis
Occurred
Jul 20
Type
sop

Purpose

Command Center is a workspace, not a filing cabinet. This SOP describes the actual daily and weekly rhythm of using it — what to click first in the morning, when to write vs. when to read, and what constitutes a "clean" state at end of day. Written for future team members, for the founder's own future self after a two-week vacation, and for any prospective client wondering "what does using this actually feel like."

Owner and status

Curtis owns this SOP. Status: approved, actively used. Reviewed monthly during the internal weekly review; edited whenever a workflow drift is observed.

The daily rhythm

  1. 7:45 AM — Open the Internal Dashboard first, always. Not email, not Slack, not LinkedIn. Read the Daily Brief paragraph. Read the Alerts. Do not click into anything yet. Ask: is any of this new-information versus what I ended yesterday knowing? Whatever is new goes at the top of today.

  2. 8:00 AM — Triage email. Only the "Requires reply" and "Unread" rows. Do not open a full inbox. If a reply takes under 2 minutes, send it. If it needs thought, mark it and it will show back up in the alerts tomorrow. Do not respond to system notifications (Stripe, GitHub, Vercel) — they update on their own dashboards.

  3. 8:20 AM — Scan Messages (SMS) and Pipeline > LinkedIn activity. SMS gets a same-day reply always, even if it's "I'll come back to you after 2pm." LinkedIn activity gets logged in the Pipeline deal — no reply required today unless it's a booking.

  4. 8:30 AM — Look at today's Calendar and open the prep note for each meeting. If a meeting has no prep note, create one — even one bullet. Meetings without prep notes are meetings you are not the person you want to be in.

  5. All day — Client contexts on demand. Switch to a client context only when you're actively working on that client's work. Do not "check in" on client dashboards while doing internal work — the switching cost is real and the Alerts row is designed to surface anything that actually needs you.

  6. 5:30 PM — End-of-day sweep. Return to Internal Dashboard. Check: does the Daily Brief still make sense given today? Are there tasks I closed that should be marked complete? Any messages left in the Requires-reply state that will nag me tomorrow — decide now.

The weekly rhythm

  1. Friday 11:00 AM — Internal weekly review. Run this like a client L10 on yourself. Review own Scorecard (MRR, pipeline weighted, discovery calls, wins, losses), Rocks, Headlines, To-dos, Issues. This is the meeting you skip when you're busy; it's also the meeting that prevents you from being busy.

  2. Monday morning — 15 minutes to preview the week. Look at every client's upcoming L10 for the week ahead. Skim their Overview narrative. Note anything that needs pre-work.

Writing vs. reading

  • Read: Dashboard, Alerts, Email inbox, SMS, Calendar. These are consumption surfaces.
  • Write: Tasks (as they come to mind — never let a task idea live in your head for more than 5 minutes), Meeting prep notes (before every meeting), Client Reports (weekly), SOP drafts (when a workflow feels wobbly), Pipeline deal updates (after every activity).
  • Read AND write: Client Overview narratives, Rocks status, Issues List — updated during the L10, referenced daily.

What "clean state" looks like

At end of any given day, the workspace is clean if: (a) no Alerts on the Internal Dashboard are older than 48 hours without a task attached; (b) no email is in the Requires-reply state older than 3 business days; (c) every meeting on tomorrow's calendar has a prep note; (d) no task is overdue by more than 5 business days without a status change; (e) every client context has at least one interaction (email, task update, or note) in the last 7 days.

Edge cases

  • You skipped 3 days. Do not try to catch up on everything. Open the Dashboard, read the brief, take the top 3 alerts, close only those. The rest is triage over the next 2 days.
  • A client hasn't been touched in 10+ days. The system will flag it yellow. Do not ignore. Even a 4-line "here's where we are" email counts.
  • You caught yourself context-switching between clients 6 times in an hour. Stop, close everything, go back to the Internal Dashboard, pick one, do 90 uninterrupted minutes.

Success criteria

  • Dashboard is the first thing opened every morning, no exceptions.
  • Every meeting has a prep note.
  • No client goes 7 days without a real touchpoint.
  • The Friday internal review actually happens, weekly, for 12 consecutive weeks.

Related SOPs

  • Weekly Client Meeting (L10) SOP
  • Client Onboarding SOP
  • Financial Operations SOP