Everything wrong with your culture is showing up in one meeting. You're just not seeing it yet.
Most leadership books tell you to have better one-on-ones. This one tells you why yours keep failing, and what that failure is actually trying to tell you.
The Missed Meeting applies Self-Determination Theory, the science of Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness, to the most misunderstood 30 minutes in business. Pete Ketchum, an industrial-organizational psychologist and former military intelligence professional, draws on decades of field experience across finance, construction, government, and tech to reveal a pattern hiding in plain sight: organizations don't have a motivation problem. They have a demotivation problem. And the one-on-one is where it becomes visible.
Inside you'll find:
- The Sustain-Improve Framework—a feedback structure built on how humans—actually process information.
- Meeting cadences calibrated to role and psychological need
- Red flags that reveal when the meeting isn't the problem—the organization is
- The ARC Self-Assessment for diagnosing friction across your team
- A Pocket Playbook you can reference before every meeting
This book is for managers, founders, HR leaders, and anyone who's ever left a one-on-one wondering why they bothered. It's short, practical, and grounded in science, not corporate platitudes.
Stop trying to motivate people. Start removing what's demotivating them.
