Hi there, 

If you've ever switched roles or industries, you might have felt out of depth, inadequate, or any of the other torturous emotions from the emotional trousseau of a novice. If you've successfully made a career switch, read on with a smile - this is familiar territory. 

Most professions value industry experience, and rightly so. Time spent working in your market helps you develop frameworks and approaches for problem-solving, understand the jargon, the landscape and you build a bedrock of knowledge that eventually qualifies you as an expert in the field. 

But here's the catch; sometimes, you can get so entrenched in your worldview that you start to take things for granted. It might take a novice to ask a seemingly dumb question to shake things up. A fresh pair of eyes can be your biggest strength.

In the mid-90s, a Children's Hospital in the UK consulted with the Ferrari F1 pit crew team to improve their ICU handoff process. The pit crew team suggested a new protocol after viewing a recording of their operating room. The new protocols reduced the team's error rate from 30% to 10%! In 2016, the Williams F1 team, which had the fastest tire changes that season, assisted a hospital in Wales in optimizing its resuscitation techniques for a neonatal unit

In this week's Compass, we're discussing the potential of simple ideas to reshape conventional wisdom - for strategies, products, and even entire organizations. 

What we’re reading

Last week Warren Buffet turned 92. Let’s celebrate by reading up on how this self-professed “non-techie” person’s first tech investment turned out to be his best. 

Buffet’s $152B Apple bet explained.

Is Apple’s rally for privacy with iOS14 an ethical move or a brilliant strategy? 

It’s all about advertising revenue, and Apple is its own Trojan horse.

For the ‘thread’worms

Read the Twitter thread here >

5 Off-beat Lessons from the Industry to Reduce Customer Churn >

We all want to retain our customers but don’t wait until they’re about to leave. 

The Best Way to Win the Freemium Model Is by Challenging the Very Model Itself >

Here are lessons from Cirque du Soleil, AWS, and Chargebee’s personal experiences.

Friction Isn’t Always the Bad Guy in User Experience >

UX case studies from MailChimp, Slack, ProductHunt, and Chargebee.

In this week's episode, James Solomons, Global CFO and co-COO of Xref, entrepreneur, renowned speaker, and podcast host, talks about the importance of 'humanizing the numbers' and becoming a cyber-resilient CFO.