Our Standard Operating Procedures are somewhere in the gray zone between guidelines and rules. This is a difficult path to maneuver at times, due to their nature.
The SOP are not rules!
The SOP does not mandate how you must do your rescues. The SOP are there to help define what you should do in a normal rescue situation, and some abnormal ones. But rescues are fluid things, and we are often faced with situations that the SOP does not explicitly cover. There are also situations where we have to improvise outside of SOP. And as long as our ultimate goal - rescuing the client - is behind the reasoning for going outside SOP, then it is all good.
The SOP are not guidelines you can choose to ignore for the heck of it!
While you are encouraged to think outside the box when needed, deviating from the SOP when you don't have to is likely going to raise some brows. By deviating, we mean things like pre-winging, or dropping manual rather than with Wingman Navlock on a standard rescue, or not reporting wing request/friend requests because you don't feel like it. The SOP are written the way they are because they have proven to be the most efficient way we have to rescue clients, while providing a common workflow that all rats and dispatchers understand. If you deviate from SOP, there should be a good reason for it, not just whim.
In short, use SOP when you can, and think when you can't.
If a rescue is proving difficult, and following the Standard Operating Procedures does not seem like the most efficient and safe way to save the client, do what you can - or must - to save the client. But be prepared to defend your choice of deviating from SOP if other rats do not think the situation warranted deviating from the SOP.