Conversations with a range of business owners from across the globe that discuss the challenges, triumphs and failures that are faced when trying to build and grow a business.
In addition we talk about the latest trends in tech and generally anything we feel is relevant for today's tech and business savvy audience
The companies interviewed operate in a diverse set of industries and are of varying maturity from the new startup to the established multi-national.
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Leading with Courage: Crisis Lessons from the Humanitarian Front Line
About This Episode
What does good leadership look like when everything is falling apart? In this episode of Bits, Bytes and Business, Bhairav talks to Dom Courage, who left a career in engineering and project management for humanitarian response with Save the Children, and now works freelance in leadership development and training.
Dom’s route in began with an intense five-day crisis simulation in Wales, where he realised he had found his tribe. He went on to support emergency and development programmes around the world, including the Rohingya response, where he stepped into a new leadership role with a team that was blocked from acting while the crisis grew around them.
The conversation focuses on leadership under pressure. Dom explains why empathy comes before process, how to move between detail and the bigger picture, and how to lead a frustrated team through change it cannot control. The episode was recorded some time ago and parts of the sector have shifted since, but the leadership lessons translate directly to anyone running a team that is growing fast or under strain.
What We Cover
How a five-day crisis simulation led Dom into a humanitarian career
Why empathy is the starting point for crisis leadership, and why it must be built before a crisis
What leaders can learn from BP’s handling of the Deepwater Horizon disaster
The “dance floor and balcony” model for switching between detail and context
Scaling a response team rapidly over a few months
Leading a team that is stuck when outside forces block it from acting
Why collaboration with “competitors” matters when everyone shares a purpose
Making trade-offs in the grey areas
Why industry experience before a humanitarian career can make you more effective
Key Takeaways
Empathy is the foundation of crisis leadership. Without it, process and planning will not save you.
You cannot summon empathy in a crisis. You have to build and protect it beforehand.
Good leaders move between the detail and the big picture, and know when to do each.
Crisis leadership is not about the leader. It is about the team and the people it serves.
Hard trade-offs are part of the job. Avoiding them often means you are not doing enough.
Links
Bhairav Patel: https://bitsbytesandbusiness.com
Dom Courage on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/domcourage/
8 Oct 2026
Reading Is a Small Act of Rebellion
Toby Muse returns to the podcast for the first time since 2020. Back then we talked about his book Kilo and his years reporting from inside the cocaine trade. This time the conversation shifts to what is happening to journalism, books, and our collective ability to pay attention. Toby is a war correspondent, author, and documentary filmmaker who has spent nearly two decades reporting from Colombia, Syria, and Iraq. He has strong views on where his industry is heading, and very few of them are optimistic.
What We Cover
- Kilo six years on, the Spanish translation, and why readers still email Toby regularly to say it is one of -their favourite books
- Whether books are heading the way of poetry recitals, and what that means for how we think
- The economics of journalism and why the money is no longer enough to attract the best people into the profession
- Audience capture: why media outlets have stopped challenging their readers and started confirming what they already believe
- The difference between punditry and reporting, and why someone still has to go to the places nobody else will
- News deserts and the disappearance of local journalism
- Why the documentary industry has narrowed to true crime and sports, and what has been lost
- The attention economy and what happens when even highly literate people stop reading
- Toby's argument that reading a book is now a small act of rebellion
- Whether there is any reason for optimism, and what it means to live purposefully in turbulent times
Key Takeaways
Journalism's crisis is not just financial. It is cultural. If outlets only deliver what their audience already believes, the profession loses its purpose.
The publishing industry is in serious trouble, not because people stopped buying books in shops, but because even committed readers are giving in to the pull of the screen.
Someone still has to do the expensive, time-consuming work of going to places and reporting. Substacks and podcasts are valuable, but they cannot replace that.
Reading builds concentration, patience, and the ability to follow a complex argument. Those are skills, and they are being lost.
In times of rapid change, the things you value will not survive by accident. You have to actively protect them.
Links
Toby Muse: https://www.tobymuse.com/
5 Oct 2026
Are you deadly serious about becoming a journalist? - Toby Muse Trailer
Toby Muse is back on the podcast for the first time since 2020, and before we get into the main event I put him through the five questions I ask everyone:
What is your morning routine?
What are you most proud of?
What annoys you?
What do you do to relax?
What advice would you give to someone looking to get into journalism?
You will hear why he starts the day with Marcus Aurelius rather than his phone, why a bike ride is where all his best thinking actually happens, and why his first response to any aspiring journalist is to try and talk them out of it.
This is the trailer to the main event, where Toby and I sit down to talk about Kilo six years on, the future of journalism and documentary filmmaking, and whether books can survive the age of the endless scroll. Stay tuned.
For more info on Toby, check out his website: https://www.tobymuse.com/
Inside a recent episode
5 Questions with Tom Green
Published 23 Sept 2024 · Transcript excerpt
[…] What do you do to relax? I think it was a process to find this, but I've actually recently kind of suffered it going to the cinema. I think it's my key thing for switching off. I'm not even like a massive movie buff or anything like that, but I realize that, you know, going for a run or even like hanging out with my girlfriend. I'm so easy for the mind to switch back to work. I do find being in the cinema, blacked out, watching a film that I haven't seen before. That actually does kind of really distract me away and let's me switch off. So that's my sort of recent thing at the last year or so, which really helps me. […]
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