Selling Cisco to China's Tech Talent Pool

With more and more multinationals opening offices and luring local talent, Jan Gronski's task at the company's Shanghai R&D center is getting tougher

by Bruce Einhorn

Growing up in Warsaw at the peak of the Cold War, Jan Gronski was determined not to play a musical instrument—and his mother was just as eager for him to learn. So the eight-year-old and his mom reached a deal: No piano lessons, but instead little Jan would study English. That compromise certainly paid off for him in 1968, when after three years of study at the University of Warsaw, Gronski was allowed to emigrate to the U.S.

There, he earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Illinois and spent over a dozen years teaching at universities in the Midwest. Then followed stints at some of the top names in Corporate America, including Xerox (XRX), General Electric (GE) and, since 1994, Cisco Systems (CSCO). Gronski is now managing director of Cisco's Shanghai research center, its first in China. Of the decision to learn English instead of the piano, he says, "I think I made the right choice."

Now Gronski's knack for languages is rewarding him in a new way. Of the six languages in which the 59-year-old is fluent, one is Chinese, something he chose to study almost as a lark while a graduate student. "I needed a challenge, and since I was a teaching assistant I could audit free of charge any classes at the university," he recalls. So Chinese it was. There's a saying in Chinese: 'A blind cat ran into a mouse.' That's how it happened."

Gronski's fluency in Chinese and his appreciation for Chinese culture led him to Shanghai three years ago. Cisco dispatched him there with a view to repairing the company's reputation, which had been damaged by a messy lawsuit against national leader Huawei Technologies.

Employee Relations

In the suit, Cisco alleged that Huawei had pilfered its proprietary technology. The two parties settled out of court in 2004, but the whole affair left an impression in the minds of many Chinese that the U.S. company was hostile to the country's rise as an IT power. To demonstrate that Cisco remained committed to developing the Chinese market and utilizing Chinese talent, Chief Executive Officer John Chambers decided to open the company's first research and development center in China and tapped Gronski to set it up.

Walk into Gronski's office, a small room with no windows, and you'll see a map of Shanghai dotted with little red stickers. Each one represents the home of a Cisco R&D center employee. "I've plotted out where all the employees live," he says. "And 75% live three to five kilometers from here."

But why should Gronski care about that? Because in sprawling Shanghai, where lots of Western multinationals are opening up R&D centers like Cisco's and where the public transportation system is still in its infancy, the competition for talent is so intense that top-flight minds like Gronski have to sweat the smallest of details in order to keep employees happy. That includes scheduling shuttle buses to and from the nearest subway station so Cisco engineers don't get fed up with their commutes and look for work closer to home.

Recruiting and Retaining Workers

"People say that there are so many people [in China] that it's easy [to hire and retain talent]," he explains over the sound of a ping-pong game taking place in the hallway outside his office. "But that's not true. You have to set up an environment where they want to come to work. You want to keep them. This is important."