SOP: Best Practices for GPT

🔍 Purpose

GPT is a powerful tool designed to support and enhance your thinking — not replace it. These guidelines help ensure we use GPT in ways that respect original thought, promote clarity, and lead to meaningful, high-quality work.

🧭 Scope

These guidelines apply to all staff who are using GPT for any company-related tasks, projects, or communications.

1. Always Start With Your Own Thinking

Before you ask GPT for help, write a rough draft in your own words.

Why: GPT can clarify, tighten, or expand your ideas — but it can't replace the deep thinking that starts with you.

✅Use GPT to:

Sharpen your structure
Explore counterpoints or alternatives
Turn a rough outline into a clear, finished piece
Help you express something you’re already working through

❌Do NOT use GPT to:

Avoid hard thinking
Generate full reports from scratch
Replace original insight with generic content

Key principle: First your brain, then GPT.

2. GPT is a Thinking Partner, Not a Replacement

GPT is very good at sounding smart — but that doesn't mean the content is deep or useful. When used without your input, GPT may produce vague, surface-level writing.

Use GPT as an assistant, not a substitute. Let it think *with* you, not *for* you.

3. Give GPT a Role and a Task

GPT works better when you give it a clear role and a specific task.

❌ Weak Prompt: ``Explain construction risks``

✅ Better Prompt with Role + Task: ``Act as a project risk analyst. Give me a step-by-step checklist to identify risks on a mid-size residential construction site in Cambodia.``

Extra Tips:

Add “step by step” to get a clearer structure
Say “think in questions first” if you're stuck or exploring
Always provide context — even one sentence like

``We’re preparing an internal SOP`` will improve the result

4. Example: What to Avoid vs. What to Aim For

❌ Bad Prompt Example (too generic): ``This report gives an overview of construction trends in Southeast Asia.``

✅ Good Prompt Example (based on your own thinking): ``I want to understand how regional construction trends might affect client risk in Cambodia. Here’s what I’ve noticed so far — can you help me structure this into a 1-page brief?

- Rising material costs in Thailand and Vietnam are starting to impact supplier pricing here.``