What motivates your team? To better motivate your team, ask three questions focused on the past, the present, and the future. Look backwards: What have you accomplished, and what about it makes you proud? These questions give you insight into the kind of work your team members like to do and what about that work makes them feel motivated. Look at today: What is getting in your way? This question can help surface demotivators or things that are frustrating your team and sapping their motivation. A big part of your job as a leader is to remove the barriers blocking their potential. Look forward: What would you like to do more of? This final question opens the door to what your team members would enjoy taking on. There may be things they want but have never communicated to you either because they couldn`t find the right time or felt they needed permission to ask.

(Adapted from `Do You Know What Motivates Your Team?,` by Rik Nemanick, published by HBR Ascend)Splitting the cheque In 2023, 49pc of restaurants in the US reported lower check averages and 53pc reported lower profits compared with the year before, according to the James Beard Foundation, a restaurantfocused nonprofit. At the same time, dining out has grown more expensive: The latest consumer-price index showed the cost of food away from home climbed 5.3pc over the 12 months ended in November. This is because restaurantgoers are looking to split entrees or stick with starters to save.

When diners share fewer dishes or linger too long, it can be tough to offset expenses like higher labour costs, says Anne McBride, vice president of programs at the James Beard Foundation. In 2022, 21pc of diners said they split an entree to lower the cost of a meal within the previous six months, and 58pc said they would keep doing so, according to market research from Datassential.

(Adapted from `Restaurants Have Ways To Stop You From Splitting Meals,` by Alina Dizik, published on December 26, 2023, by the Wall Street Journal)Bad economic crystal gazing One year ago, 85pc of economists in one poll predicted a recession in 2023 and that was an optimistic take compared to the 100pc probability of a recession forecast two months earlier.

Meanwhile, Fed Chair Jerome Powell expressed fear last March that bringing down the rate of inflation would cost millions of American jobs. And yet, none of this has happened. Both inflation and unemployment are headed in the right direction, and most economists expect the US to avoid a recession in 2024.

Economists have yet to figure out why things went so well, but it is already clear that a reckoning is due. The solution here is not to sweep past doctrine under the rug; it`s to be more forthright.

Macroeconomists very often don`t know what is going on, and that holds true for all the different styles and flavours of macro.

(Adapted from `How were So Many Economists So Wrong About The Recession?` by Tyler Cowen, published on December 26, 2023, by Bloomberg) Tycoons and Modi A handful of tycoons will shape India`s economy in an important election year and beyond. The current consensus among political analysts is for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to retain power in this year`s general elections. In that case, expect a further consolidation of wealth in the hands of Mukesh Ambani, Asia`s richest businessman, and Gautam Adani, his closest rival a validation of what Arvind Subramanian, a former economic adviser to the Modi administration, has described as India`s `2A variant of stigmatised capitalism,` in which the private sector as a whole can`t be trusted. While there is a strong possibility that India, still a lowermiddle-income economy, will have not one but two centi-billionaires in 2024, there are dangers of allowing even encouraging a handful of business groups to consolidate wealth in a few hands.

(Adapted from `The Four Fortunes Riding On A Modi Win in 2024,` by Andy Mukherjee, published on January 2, 2024, by Bloomberg)