Real Estate and Construction
Lessons learned
How to help everyone learn from mistakes
By Brian Horn
Smart Business Philadelphia | September 2008
Page 1 of 2
Nick Cinalli
president and CEO, O’Donnell & Naccarato Inc.
Being a benevolent dictator can be a difficult
task, but that’s what Nick Cinalli tries to do at O’Donnell & Naccarato Inc.
“You need to be understanding, yet firm, and you need to
know when to put your foot
down but not necessarily go
around throwing your weight,”
he says.
The president and CEO of
the 100-employee structural
engineering design firm —
which has grown 100 percent
during the last seven years —
says that to achieve that balance, you have to start with a
positive outlook.
Smart Business spoke with
Cinalli about how to act more
benevolently and less like a
dictator and how to help
everyone learn from people’s
mistakes.
Q. How do you know when to
put your foot down or when to
be nice?
You start out by being nice.
That’s easy for some people to
do and harder for others. I
tend to be a little bit on the
softer side. I tend to always
look at the good things in people, and I’m tolerant of people
if there are mistakes made.
But then, I become a stern
dictator if the same mistake is
made twice.
Q. How has being a benevolent dictator benefited the
company?
It lets the staff be individualistic so they’re not afraid to
make that move. They know
that there is some level of
understanding that is going to
be available to them. I don’t want staff to think they can
constantly make a mistake, or
even the same mistake, without any consequences.
Yet, at the same time, we all
understand, I understand, that
mistakes will be made.
You try to get the staff to
understand that it’s OK to
think on your own, to be independent, to be individualistic.
But, at the same time, be very
careful in your service and
process and try not to make
mistakes.
If you make one, obviously,
the ramifications are they are
going to owe me or someone
an explanation, but they aren’t
going to get fired for it.
