What is a healthy organizational culture? A healthy organizational culture is one which should help all the supervisors and employees of the company be on the same page as those in charge. A good organizational culture is of benefit to every member of the company from the very top to the very bottom. If any group of workers feels marginalized, then the culture can be improved.

A good organizational culture has the ability to maximize employees' creative ideas and strategies. There are certain behaviors that can undercut this type of a culture, and one way to get an idea of a healthy culture is to look at some of the common traits of an unhealthy culture. Some of the most common traits of a weak and ineffective organizational culture are:

Ã,· Process is more importance than purpose. When supervisors are more concerned about doing x number of say lines of programming, or phone calls, versus how good the programming is or how effective the phone calls were, this is one example. Think of that English teacher who gave a six page essay an 'A' even if it didn't make any sense while a well thought out three page essay got a 'C' because it wasn't long enough. Same concept.

Ã,· Authority is more important than service. Any time people in power positions feel that it is necessary for them to constantly exercise that power by riding the people under them, it's only a matter of time until the system collapses.

Ã,· Form is more important than reality. Remember the Internet bubble bursting? Well people kept buying stock when a company talked about "new strategy to corner the market" but they never showed a profit in three years. What happened? They went broke. No fancy marketing plans can pull you out of that.

Ã,· Precedence is more important than adaptability. This often happens with really large companies and is always a warning sign. See IBM's fall from goliath, to another company, and how Microsoft took their place by being the most adaptable company out there.

In contrast to this, a healthy organizational culture has several trademarks. Some of the most common include the following:

Ã,· Clearly defined purpose. A company with a good organizational culture knows exactly what its goals are and what each employee's job entitles in order to get there.

Ã,· Service. Service not only to customers, but a sense of service from each employee to the company itself. They should want to work for the company and want to see the company succeed.

Ã,· Realistic. They know when they can expand, and when they can't. They can look at numbers and instead of giving a glowing report when it looks like recession to keep the stock up, they can analyze and see that hard times are coming and adjust accordingly.

Ã,· Adaptability. Companies with healthy organizational cultures are very adaptable. They can roll with good and bad markets, seize an advantage/opportunity when one comes along, and can deal quickly with the unexpected.

These are all the signs of a strong company with a healthy organizational culture.