In conversation with Elise Aplin

Most recently, Elise has been living the island life in Mauritius and will soon be returning home to Australia. We caught up with her to have a chat about what she’s been up to.

Can you tell us a bit about your background and professional journey thus far?

My background is specifically in health sciences, so I did some diagnostic science and then I wanted to move into bioinformatics. I decided to move into the technology space for a bit and then eventually thought I was going to end up back in science using my kind of tech knowledge for that. That never happened. I started working in technology consulting and I really, really liked it. Partly I liked the kind of hands on, let’s build, build something together and the creative side of it. And the other piece I liked was the collaboration side of things.

I’d always done a lot of sport growing up and it was always an individual sport and I’d find myself trying to create a team atmosphere around that. And so then when I had the opportunity to actually work in a way that was super collaborative, I was like -this is what I’ve been looking for. So I never made my way back to science and instead have kind of been in different spheres from consulting to working directly with startups. Now I’m freelancing, sort of just doing my own thing and yeah, kind of feel like I found the place for me.

What are your favourite things to do as part of your work now?

I like two really specific parts that are on the opposite ends of the spectrum. I love deep problem solving, whether it’s in the workplace or trying to solve a problem at home. In the technology landscape I am more on the product management side. I am not a hands-on software developer, but even in product management there’s a lot of problem solving that happens. How can we get eyeballs across what we’re building? What are the different pathways with say, not very much money? If you’re working for a startup where you can bring awareness to your product, what are the creative things we could do there? Sometimes it’s just as simple as, what is a creative way that we can communicate clearly that our product has a fee, but also not terrify people about that fee. So little things like that in the design of products I absolutely love.

The other piece I really like is helping people more effectively talk to each other in order to problem solve and collaborate. And I enjoy doing this beyond just the workplace. I encounter many times where people in the workplace, all people outside the workplace, are telling me about a situation that they’ve got. And my answer is always, well, just talk about it honestly. Like, don’t dance around that. That’s going to be uncomfortable to talk about, but it’s more uncomfortable right now.

I feel like I need to invite you to my Christmas dinner to help navigate all the spirited conversations! What are you most looking forward to in coming home from Mauritius?

One of the things about living in Mauritius is that there is a really small technology sector here. We’re trying to build a couple of communities. We started with Agile Mauritius. There’s a few conferences that take place here, but there isn’t the same ability to just easily reach out to somebody and say, hey, I’ve got this challenge. Can you talk through it with me? Or do you have ideas or resources that I could use?

So I’m looking forward to being back in Melbourne where I can just, you know, send somebody a quick message and say, hey, can we catch up for a coffee? I’ve got this gnarly problem that really needs another set of eyes on it.

You were in Mauritius when COVID hit, do you have any personal observations from your time there?

The interesting thing about Mauritius is that there isn’t a food delivery network here. Uber doesn’t exist in Mauritius, which means no Uber Eats and no big functional food delivery network. And this is relevant because in the first lockdown in Mauritius, we were stuck inside for, I think it was about 10 days, where you could not leave your house for any reason other than seeking medical support or if you were a frontline worker.

You couldn’t go to the grocery store, you couldn’t walk your dog, you were just inside. And this was a surprise decision. So people didn’t have enough food. So the government had to solve this problem of how do we get groceries to all of these people without, you know, having a Woolworths or a Coles.

What they ended up doing was looking at what companies did actually have logistics networks and it turns out to be things like big white goods providers similar to your Harvey Normans because they’re the sorts of companies that need to deliver because people can’t get a fridge home without a delivery service. So the first step in, how do we get food to people, was that the government partnered with companies that already had a logistics network and set up this food program where you could buy groceries online through these providers.

You couldn’t pick and choose what you wanted. So it wasn’t like, you know, I want one watermelon and five mangoes. It was, I want a food pack for two people. And they decided what a food pack for two people was. So you basically just said, this is the size of my household, please deliver me food. And it was really strange because you’re literally going on a white goods website to pick your food packs. But it worked.

The thing that I absolutely loved about this was it happened on a Friday and by Sunday people had piggybacked off this idea and you could buy beer packs. People just took pictures of like a huge stockpile of beer that they had and sent it out via WhatsApp and said you can buy a one person beer pack, a two person beer pack. So on Thursday, we had no food delivery network. Friday you could have food delivery for basic groceries. By Sunday you could have chocolate or beer delivery. It was amazing. It was literally watching innovation happen in real time.

And it was really cool to watch how simple it was to set up a business. You just needed a product, you needed a picture of that product and you needed a WhatsApp number. But they also didn’t yet have the permits allowing them to provide their service at that point, because the government hadn’t had the framework in place to allow the implementation of those ideas.

But when they saw how well people responded to this and the opportunity to make people’s lives easier in COVID, then the government retroactively was like, okay, we’ll give you permits that enable you to actually go out and be on the streets to deliver this stuff. So I think, often when I see companies wanting to innovate, they’re always concerned about the existing kind of framework that they have to operate in, rather than taking that big step outside that framework and saying, okay, let’s see if there even is a market for this. And once they realize that, hey, people do want this, then we can make sure that we actually have everything in place to fulfill that. As you know, COVID was a horrible time. And I don’t want to diminish the experience that anybody had, but one of the things that I really enjoyed about it was that, you know, strange, chaotic situations forcing people to think differently about how to solve problems and even what problems to solve.

That’s so interesting – and quite Agile if you ask me! People have been saying Agile is dead. What are your thoughts on this, and how does Agile actually manifest in your life?

There’s probably parts of Agile that are dead and probably should be dead. Big, capital A, Agile. But in terms of living a life in a way where you want to continuously improve – you’re already there.

Because the ideas of starting small, stopping, reflecting, checking, course correcting and continuing and that sort of iterative process with feedback loops – that’s the only way to actually continuously improve.

You set yourself a goal, you do the smallest thing you can to work towards that goal, you check whether or not it’s working, make decisions and you go again, I’m really goal driven. My goals aren’t things like becoming a CEO. My goals are things like learning to speak a language, going on a really exciting, six month camping trip. But I’m still driven by them and they still require skills that I like to work towards constantly and I like to see progress towards those skills.

This conversation has been edited for clarity. All thanks go to Elise for sharing her stories!