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Hey there,
Ever notice how buildings feel different during the holidays, quieter in some places and suddenly hectic in others? With staffing stretched thin and systems under extra strain, a clear calendar for cleaning, security, and HVAC can keep operations steady while you use the lull for maintenance that is hard to schedule any other time.
Take a moment to see how a simple holiday plan can make the season feel far less reactive.
Playbook of the Day
How to Run a 15-Minute End-of-Day Ops Debrief
Goal: Catch issues early, reset priorities, and make tomorrow smoother than today.
Who: COO/Head of Ops, plus 1 ops lead or team lead per major function. Same time every workday.
Before the debrief (3 mins):
Each lead adds 2–3 bullets to a shared doc: what worked, what broke, what is at risk for tomorrow.
Host skims and highlights anything tagged “urgent.”
During the 15 minutes:
Today in 60 Seconds (4 mins): Each lead gives a quick update: biggest win, biggest problem, and one number that mattered. No deep dives.
Risks for Tomorrow (6 mins): Review anything tagged “urgent” or “at risk” and agree on one concrete action per item with a single owner.
Plan for Tomorrow (3 mins): Host recaps the 3–5 must-do actions for tomorrow and assigns ownership to each. Verbal “yes” from owners.
Rules: No brainstorming, no new projects, keep it about today’s reality and tomorrow’s plan.
Latest News
Holiday Playbook For Facilities Teams 🎄
Published: 12/15/2025
Facilitate Magazine outlines three practical ways facilities managers can keep buildings running smoothly during the holiday season, when foot traffic patterns shift, staffing gets thin, and systems are under unusual strain. The piece focuses on getting ahead of the rush with clear schedules and vendor plans, tightening up safety and security checks for quieter buildings, and using the lull to run essential maintenance without disrupting core operations.
Upside: If you oversee multiple sites, this gives you a simple checklist instead of having to reinvent a holiday plan from scratch each year. You can align cleaning, security, and HVAC teams around a shared calendar, set clear service-level expectations with suppliers, and capture what worked to create a reusable playbook that makes each future peak season less chaotic.
Impact: Handled well, holiday operations become a low-risk window to improve occupant experience and building performance rather than a scramble to keep the lights on. Facilities leaders who treat this period as a strategic project can reduce incidents, trim overtime and emergency callouts, and build trust with executives who care about resilience but rarely see what it takes behind the scenes.
🧑💼 HR Steps Out of the Shadows
Published: 12/16/25
Business Daily explores why HR often does the heavy lifting on culture, benefits, and tough people decisions, yet rarely shows up when recognition is handed out. The piece argues that HR’s work is mainly behind the scenes and long-term, so employees feel its impact without connecting it to the people and strategy that made it happen.
Upside: The article lays out practical ways HR can become more visible without coming across as self-promotional, from regular floor walks and informal check-ins to sharing simple impact stories that translate “systems” into human wins. It also urges HR to quantify results using metrics such as jobs saved, careers progressed, and safety incidents reduced, so leaders can clearly link HR initiatives to performance, wellness, and retention.
Impact: If HR pairs emotional presence with clear storytelling and data, it is more likely to be seen as a true business partner instead of a back-office enforcer. Combined with leadership that budgets for cross-functional recognition and builds year-round appreciation into the culture, this could finally give HR teams the visibility, trust, and influence they need to sustain performance and growth.
HR Tech Steps Into the Manager’s Chair 🤖
Published: 12/17/2025
TecHR Series argues that modern HR platforms are no longer just tracking payroll and attendance; they are quietly becoming real-time performance engines that coach, allocate work, and flag burnout risks faster than any human manager. As AI-driven systems analyze behavior, collaboration, and skill usage, they are raising a tricky question for leaders: if the platform evaluates and nudges performance all day long, what is the uniquely human job of a manager now?
Upside: If you lean into this shift, HR tech can finally take the grunt work out of management by automating monitoring, basic coaching, and fairer evaluations based on real contribution rather than tenure or gut feel. That frees leaders to focus on the work only they can do, such as making contextual trade-offs, mentoring high-potential talent, and building psychological safety across teams.
Impact: The article is clear that AI will not erase managers, but it will expose which ones add value beyond status updates and annual reviews. Organizations that pair a precise, always-on performance engine with managers who excel at empathy, culture, and meaningful decision-making will set the bar for the next generation of people leadership.
Prompt of the Day
The COO Risk Radar Prompt
Trigger Event | Action | Use Case Example |
|---|---|---|
Start of the week. | Key projects, timelines, and top-line metrics. | Short list of near-term risks and who or what they affect. |
Before leadership/ops sync. | Agenda, open issues, and dependency list. | Risks to spotlight in the meeting and questions to ask your leads. |
When a project feels “wobbly.” | Brief status, blockers, and cross-team dependencies. | Clear view of failure modes and immediate mitigation ideas. |
After a surprising incident. | What happened, the impact, and how it was handled. | Root-cause themes and next steps to prevent repeats. |
Month-end / quarter-end planning. | Upcoming milestones and resource constraints. | Risk map for the next 30 days and 2–3 actions to de-risk the plan. |
Prompt
“Act as my risk radar. Based on this snapshot of our current projects, metrics, and team updates, (1) flag the top 3 operational or execution risks for the next 30 days, (2) show me early warning signals to watch this week, and (3) suggest 2–3 concrete mitigation steps I can assign today.”
Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.
One last Thing
Holiday operations can be a strategic window, not just a survival exercise. Getting ahead of schedules, vendors, and safety checks can cut overtime, reduce incidents, and improve the day-to-day experience for anyone still in the building.
The best work often happens when nobody is watching, and this is one of those moments.
Until next edition,
Chloe Rivers
Editor-in-Chief
COO Intelligence
P.S. Interested in sponsoring a future issue? Just reply to this email and I’ll send packages!