Hey,

7:14PM in Murrieta California, trying not to fall asleep before 9PM because jetlag is a liar that tells you 7PM is bedtime. Been staring at the same Google Doc for 20 minutes. My brain thinks it's tomorrow morning in Manila and is very confused why the sun is still up.

And this jetlag inspires me to spice up the format of our newsletter a little bit (promise, it's just a little change).

I’m staring at a doc for 20 minutes. It is the note from a discovery call last Wednesday that made me realize I've been wrong about something I've been saying for six months.

2 contradictions:

I used to say "Brands fail because functions don't talk". I may have mentioned this multiple times in my newsletter. But now I realized "Brands fail because nobody wants to be the one who says the plan won't work", realizing it after my Wednesday call.

What I used to think: Marketing, finance, and supply chain don't talk enough. The fix is more meetings. Get everyone in a room, look at the same dashboard, problem solved.

I've been saying this for months. I built an entire dinner event around it.

What happened: Last Wednesday, 3pm call with a $12M brand. They HAVE the weekly meeting. They've had it for 8 months. Marketing, finance, supply chain, same room, every Monday, same dashboard.

They're still bleeding cash in Q4.

I asked to see their meeting notes. Here's what I found:

They saw it coming. Every single week, they SAW it. Supply chain knew the lead time. Finance knew the cash position. Marketing knew the Q4 plan.

Nobody said "this plan won't work, we need to change it."

They had the meeting. They had the data. They had alignment on what they were SEEING.

They didn't have permission to kill the plan.

What I think now: The meeting problem isn't about having the meeting. It's about what you're allowed to say IN the meeting.

Most brands have this unspoken hierarchy: Marketing builds the plan (because they "own" revenue), Finance checks if we can afford it (but doesn't challenge the plan itself), Supply Chain executes it (but isn't expected to say "this won't work").

The weekly meeting becomes a reporting session, not a decision session. Everyone is aligned on watching the same car crash in slow motion.

The fix is contribution margin per order as a shared KPI.

Actually no. The real fix is one sentence that needs to be true in your business:

Not "raise concerns." Not "flag risks." CALL BULLSHIT.

If your supply chain person can't look at marketing's Q4 calendar and say "this is not executable, we need to cut two campaigns or push the launch 6 weeks" without fearing they'll be seen as "not a team player," you don't have an alignment problem. You have a safety problem.

What I still don't know: How to measure whether a team actually has this or just thinks they do. I'm trying to figure out the diagnostic question that reveals it.

Maybe it's: "What's the last plan that got killed in your weekly meeting?"

If the answer is "nothing in the last 6 months," that's not a good sign. That's not alignment. That's compliance.

Dropped this in Slack: "Real talk - when was the last time someone on the team killed something we were planning to do?"

Responses ranged from "last week when Omar said the timeline was fantasy" to "we killed the Vietnam series three times before it got made" to "does killing Lara's idea to add a fourth product vertical count?"

(Yes it counts, and I'm still mad about it, and they were right.)

[7:42pm] - Just re-read what I wrote above and realized I'm doing that thing where jetlag makes me too honest.

But I'm keeping it because Andrew Faris (who's on the panel for the LA dinner) said something last week that's been stuck in my head: "The problem isn't that they don't know what to do. It's that they need permission from someone outside their company to do it."

Which means the panel shouldn't be "here's how to align your functions."

It should be: "Here's permission to kill bad plans before they kill your Q4."

I'm rewriting the panel questions tonight. (Tomorrow morning? Time is fake.)

I'm still hosting the dinner. Filipino food, long table, boodle fight until 10pm.

But the panel changed.

Three experts talking about alignment frameworks

Three people who have all had to tell a founder "your plan won't work" and lived to tell about it:

One hour before dinner, we're running a conversation about:

In person → 30 seats, more than half gone

Virtual → Free livestream + recording

If you have the weekly meeting and you're still surprised by your quarters, the meeting isn't the problem.

Ask yourself: What's the last plan that got killed in that meeting?

If the answer is "nothing," that's your problem.

Hit reply and tell me the last time you killed a plan. I'm collecting these.

Lara

P.S. I just yawned so hard I think I pulled something. This email is getting sent before I fall asleep on my laptop. If there are typos, blame the timezone gods.

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