Growing Pains

Ixia is a US-based telecommunications and technology company specializing in network testing and security services. Riding the Asian high-tech boom of recent years, Ixia’s Asian operations have expanded from a tiny outpost of about 15 people in 2007 to over 150 employees today, with operations in every major Asian country.

Though there has been tremendous growth, like all growing companies, Ixia’s management has encountered talent challenges along the way. Bhat compares it to switching from playing a half-court game with only a few players to a full-court game with a complete team. As you grow and hire, what roles do you give to the people who joined from the beginning? And what roles do you give to those who joined in later? How do you acquire the new talent? He argues, “It is very different in an established company where you can just buy talent from anywhere and then fit them into the existing structure. We need to grow existing talent as the business grows, while also adding new players who come in through acquisitions.” He adds that the biggest challenge can be aligning teams across a common purpose. “When you have only 2-3 people working in a small office in a frontier country by themselves, how do you make them feel like part of the team? And when you superimpose the growth we have experienced, all of a sudden you have to work together with new team members in different countries. It can be challenging”

If not effectively managed, this challenge could lead to fragmentation and alienation of parts of the workforce. However, It seems that Ixia is successfully managing this growth. Ixia’s Asia-Pacific arm reports only a 4% annual employee turnover rate. This is impressive given PwC's recent estimates of an average of over 15% turnover in Asia (and estimates even higher for tech industries). Bhat explains, “Our employees don’t carry the same “blue chip” name cards associated with an Oracle or HP, but what they have is a sense of empowerment as they directly contribute to the company’s growth and the engagement they have with each other and with management.”

Technology-Enabled Team-Building: Asia Games Day

How has Ixia maintained such a high level of engagement? Bhat believes that it is due, in part, to the way in which he appraoches team-building. For example, the Ixia team regularly participates in fun activities outside of work, like trekking and taking cooking and taiko drum classes (pictured above is Bhat, near the middle with a blue shirt and blue jeans, drumming with his team).

In addition, Bhat has engineered a series of inter-country friendly competitions that Ixia employees engage in every year. One prominent example is Asia Games Day, a kind of workplace Olympics where employees within a given country work as a team to compete against groups from other countries. Interestingly, teams are often distributed throughout a given country, where there may be a group in Beijing working together with a team in Shanghai to compete against a team in Bangalore. Teams compete in a series of three events using technology to bring the competition to life. 

The first Asia Games Day took place in 2009. That year, teams participated in competitions of running, bowling, and an online first-person strategy game. For the running component, each member of the team used a GPS-enabled smartphone app to log how long it took them to run 5 km. Each team ran wherever was most convenient for them. For example, a member of the Korean team who was on travel deplaned in London and ran 5 km at the airport. “Though some may have been sceptical about a team-building exercise at first, they really seemed to take ownership of it and things got quite competitive very quickly,” Bhat says.  Similarly, for the bowling component, teams went to the nearest bowling alley and posted their average scores in a Facebook group, before having dinner and a beer to commiserate or celebrate their scores. Finally, teams worked together to compete in a round-robin style tournament to compete in an online strategy game. Using video conferencing software, they were able to see the opposing teams in real time while their avatars engaged in a strategic battle in the game.

Bhat indicates that Asia Games Day has gotten more competitive and exciting each year and is a highly anticipated event for employees. In addition to the pride that’s at stake every tear, the winning team receives a roving trophy with the year and names of the team members inscribed on it. What’s more, each year one team gets to put a cultural spin on the competition and choose which games are played. For example, one year the Korean team added a jump roping competition to the list given it’s popularity in Korea. Teams around Asia often have to get creative to compete. For example, the Singaporean team did not have a jump rope, so they improvised by jumping over Ethernet cables in the office.

“The cost of the competition is next to nothing”, Naveen adds. To build on this low-cost success, Bhat has introduced a series of additional challenges throughout the year designed to improve the morale of the team and help create a sense of purpose. One example is China Rising, a fitness challenge for the Chinese teams (there are 5 spread throughout China) to climb the steps to each of their 10th floor offices enough times in 1 month to add up to the height of Mt. Everest. “There was some infighting and political issues happening in the China offices and it was really starting to hurt morale,” Bhat recalls, “so this was just one way to help bring them together.” Though the challenge started off a bit sluggishly, some members started posting their progress on boards in the office and eventually on Weibo (the Chinese microblogging service), which really boosted participation in the challenge.

By the end of the month, the employees not only met the goal, but they had climbed the equivalent of five Mt. Everest’s (almost 150,000 feet)! “Once everyone said ‘we can do it,’ the challenge caught on and people started climbing the stairs every time.” Even customers joined in the stair climbing after inquiring about the curious phenomenon. “This brought the team together in a way that we never imagined.”

In another event, Bhat challenged the teams to log the distance they run or walk every week with Ixia pledging $1 for charity for each kilometer traversed. “The Japan and India teams got really competitive and employees were checking their phones every night and every morning to see how much the other team was progressing.” Bhat adds, “One time, Japan was ahead of India by 140 km. The head of the Bangalore office told his team that at the end of the day that some of the team would be walking home that evening and he encouraged everyone to join. This is really difficult to do in India because the streets are often crowded and in poor condition. However, the next morning, the Japan team woke up to see that they had been beaten overnight by the India team.” This friendly sense of competition has only grown each year.

Tips for Action

Bhat says that of course competitions like this are not a panacea for all problems in the workplace. In some cases, training or staffing decisions need to be made to solve conflict and improve engagement. However, if done well, such programs are a cheap way to energize employees, develop a “can do” team orientation, and see who emerges as natural leaders. Based on this success, Bhat offers a few tips for action when designing team-building programs.

1. Tie the competition to something more personally meaningful for the employees like fitness or charity goals or learning a new skill.

2. Use technology to bring distributed teams together so that they feel like a cohesive unit.

3. Empower employees by letting them choose the competitions and the rules that will be used.

4. Be flexible to allow teams to compete in their own way, respecting differences in geographies, customs, etc. 

5. Showcase success stories in a public way to encourage others to step up.

Perhaps most important of all, make it fun and engaging. Don’t approach it like it’s a training seminar. Allow it to evolve organically and let the competition be a source of fun without getting too serious. After all, it should be something that reduces stress and brings people closer together.