One of the most important components of any project, no matter what industry, is the team. Even if you have a super innovative product or a unique service that your customers want, you cannot be successful without a reliable team of professionals who know what they are doing and how to do it.
How the team was created
The APIZ project is an innovative project that brings together the agricultural and crypto industries. Since our project is based on an offline beekeeping business, the project involves several teams from completely different industries, such as beekeeping itself, namely all apiary workers, a technical team that is responsible for creating hive telemetry, a social media team that includes content creators, marketers, and digital development team in which are experienced developers, designers, copywriters and SEO optimizers.
Last, but not least is the administrative team which includes the founders of the project, the project manager, the product owner, and other administrative staff. Yes, we are all very different, we have various knowledge, skills, and specializations, but we are united by the fact that we are all ready to dive into a new topic and work together to achieve the common goal of the project. Working in synergy, like bees working in a hive – this is exactly what our team is about.
When Igor Ganea voiced the idea of his project, we simply believed in it and gathered talented people to participate in the project. It felt like we rallied like a bee hive, looking for information, working overtime and even outside of work to study the topic and the cryptocurrency. We have united around the idea of the project, we have been learning during the launch of the project and we are not stopping to learn every day.
About work processes and deadlines
We use some tools of the Agile methodology, for example, we have meetings where we discuss and monitor large tasks, collect focus groups and brainstorm together. Initially, we planned to cooperate with experts from the field of the crypto world, but then we realized that a third-party expert or consultant would not be able to devote all his time to the project the way our internal team does, so all tasks are covered internally, and only for tasks for which we do not have experts, we are looking for third-party specialists.
Also, we do retrospective meetings, where we discuss the previous and current tasks, what went well, what can be improved in future iterations, and what action items a team and each of its members can do to enhance the effectiveness of processes within the team. This is a very simple and very useful tool that allows the team to make new decisions about how to work better and do more to achieve the project’s long-term goals.
How to motivate your team
Firstly, one of the team’s motivational factors is that they themselves are ready to spend time and go through their personal challenge, to understand whether it will be possible to do it amazingly since they have never done it. Motivation within a team is much higher when everyone is burning with the same goal, to do what no one has ever done, and change the world, no matter how grandiose and ambitious it may sound.
Each member of the team must feel that he is contributing to the overall success of an ambitious project, so our team does not have the classic hierarchy that is usually followed in large companies. Within the APIZ team, all positions are equal and strong, and all employees equally make decisions that motivate them and allow them to periodically try on active positions in the project. Our CEO rarely speaks first, usually, he listens to employees and together with them solves the problems that the company faces.
Transparency and clarity are essential for motivating employees. They will not want to put effort into achieving corporate goals if they do not understand what these goals are for. Therefore, all our employees know how their work fits into the big picture. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle with 1000 pieces, it’s almost impossible to judge the big picture from one piece, but when employees see the big picture, they evaluate their personal pieces differently.
The main general motivation is the scale of the project, we are not just launching a new crypto coin, we believe in improving the world, we want to be pioneers in beekeeping with our offline business, due to which the coin will develop. To be the first in the world, and not in your own country, it’s just awesome!
Mistakes in the work and the project
Everyone makes mistakes, but our joint experience and background allow us to painlessly go through them, draw the necessary conclusions and move on. Considering that in the past we have worked with hundreds of professionals, hired people, fired employees, provided services on freelance sites, and collaborated with both local and international companies, working on the APIZ project is a new, albeit very difficult, the challenge that we accept and which we have been successfully leading for several months now.
As an example of a challenge, I can tell you about the Roadmap of the project. Igor’s idea of its execution goes beyond the usual 3D and visualization. We have already discussed this idea with several teams of specialists, with animation studios and freelancers, but the more unusual the idea, the more difficult it is to find someone who can bring it to life. By the way, if you deal with 3D visualization or know someone who does amazing projects, do not hesitate to contact us 🙂
We are sure that for any task of a technical nature, you can find an effective solution, the only question is whether we will look for it for a long time and make our way “in the dark” or whether our experience will help us immediately find the best option.
Innovative idea – motivation or problem?
It was the innovative idea of our project that became the biggest motivation for the team. The bee is one of the oldest creatures and the fact that mankind still eats its food thanks to bees and because they pollinate plants is unimaginable and unbelievable. Small creatures, weighing approximately 100 mg, pollinate more than a trillion flowers every day worldwide and produce honey, which, thanks to its nutrients, is second only to mother’s milk.
To create innovation, it is not enough to discuss ideas and make a plan for the year. Innovations are born in a culture of experiments, must be quickly tested, and the knowledge gained should be used to build new hypotheses. Therefore, flexibility and adaptability have become key principles for all our employees and our project.
If we talk about my personal opinion about bee tokenization and about the APIZ project, then every day I learn something new, and I am glad to be a witness and participant in such a project. Someone will say that it is impossible, and he will be right, it may be impossible today, but it may be possible tomorrow. Just like 20 years ago, no one knew what bitcoin and electronic currency were, and now tens of thousands of people use it.
