Communicational Culture

Communicational culture could be defined as the body of communications habits acquired and naturally used by an organization. In other words, when as an organization we think about communications, what does it mean in concrete and daily terms?

Any organization naturally develops a communicational culture based on its own internal as well as external communications needs.

Depending on the nature of the organization, the communicationl culture can be influenced by the need to maintain important internal communications or by the vital obligation to develop communications mainly aimed at outside the organization.

Any organization, company or institution has usually no choice but to maintain a minimum of internal and external communications without which it takes the risk of compromising its existence as an organizational entity.

Internal or External Communications?

With the creation of an organization, according to the nature of its mission and objectives, the communicational culture is already taking shape more towards internal or external communications.

For example, at the social level an association gathering a number of people sharing common interests and geography will naturally develop a more internal-oriented communicational culture, while an organization mandated to raise funds won’t have the choice tbut to orient itself towards the “exterior”, the public at large and eventual partners fostering their image  and promoting their brand and prestige.

Types or levels of communications

On another level, the smaller and younger the organization, the more it faces the need to make external communications efforts to make itself known in the public space.

Conversely, as the organization becomes more importand and accumulates years of functioning and gathering a larger number of people, it needs to develop an important internal communications system to maintain some mobilization and cohesion of the whole. Which is frequently done to the detriment of external communications.

Two complementary actions that could explain the originality, influence and importance of the L’Arche movement.

The situation of L'Arche and Jean Vanier Charisma

The situation of L’Arche is particular on this aspect, in the sense that right from its beginnings, L’Arche, through the personality of its founder, managed to give the same importance to the internal and external communications development.

On one side Jean Vanier, by his extraordinary empathy and openness, succeeded in creating a home to welcome people with great relational integration difficulties, which presupposes a sustained and particular attention on the internal communications level. On the other side and simultaneously, this same person, endowed with a strong conviction and exceptional charisma, didn’t hesitate to speak up, write and go in all public spaces calling for more humanity towards the weak and vulnerable.

These two complementary actions explain the originality, influence and importance of the L’Arche movement. One without the other would have only succeeded in creating an extraordinary initiative in a remote area of France, or to make known a prolific and engaged writer whose words wouldn’t necessarily be followed by concrete actions in the field.

The L’Arche movement as a whole has enjoyed and still enjoys the benefit of the double commitment, human and public, of its founder.

What to do?

Following its founder’s impulse, how is this double commitment of L’Arche happening now?

First, anyone can see that L’Arche is no longer a small emerging organization, but rather an important international federation, supported by well-proven foundations with an impressive social network at its disposal. In this context, the running and management of this big “boat”, of this “international ark”, requires of course lots of resources and energy from the inside.

On the human relations level, the importance of L’Arche is such that some may end up thinking that this movement could be self-sufficient. As a big village can live in a relative social autonomy. Without the permanent necessity of attracting new assistants and donors, the need to maintain a certain level of external communications could end up lower in the priority list.

In fact, it could be interesting to put a figure to the time and resources spent on internal communications versus the efforts and energy given to public communications. Without challenging the practices of L’Arche as it is not the goal of this article, this exercise would help to paint a realistic picture of the balance between internal and external communications.

As an example, the extraordinary mobilization efforts around the Kolkata meeting could be categorized as internal communications. Is there another event involving comparable amounts of time and resources for communications to the general public?

As for the communicational culture of L’Arche as the movement presents itself today, we can accurately affirm that internal communications receive particular attention. For one simple reason: the federation gathers an important number of people who made the choice of community life and whose first role is to welcome vulnerable people inside human-sized homes (which in itself is already quite a vocation). Therefore L’Arche has attracted and recruited persons endowed with great human qualities of dedication, abnegation and faithfulness, which is exceptional compared with the average of workers employed in organizations, companies and institutions.

A Family Culture

The result is a relational and “family” culture centered on the individual and the relationships with the others. All the L’Arche meetings are imbued with this will to listen to all and to the needs of each person, so that harmony reigns not only in each home but in the L’Arche wider family as well. A thousand kilometers away from the competition and opportunism raging in professional environments!

How is this double commitment happening now within L’Arche?

This doesn’t take anything away from the extraordinary perseverance, savoir-faire and public awareness raising of most local communities founders. A huge amount of “external communications” was needed to build L’Arche as it is today!

Neither does it mean that the regions, countries and the federation don’t make important efforts of public communications! And to end paying homage to those whose contribution is just as important, all the people related to fundraising and subvention seeking, as well as appealing to donors, take part inevitably to the communication process towards the “outside world”.

This diqramm was presented to the local HR representatives to illustrate the internal vs external flow of energy

Coming back to the double human and public commitment of Jean Vanier, how is this double commitment happening now within L’Arche?

Beyond all the communications and efforts to make known our “parish”, our organization and its mission, what happens with the public and unselfish commitment to expose the sources of dehumanization in the world and attract the attention on the first victims of this dehumanization? A dehumanization that in the end affects us all!

Maybe this is where L’Arche is most capable and legitimate to naturally become an important player in humanity’s quest for orientation in its journey, as Jean Vanier already is as an individual.

If so, after the assistant and community leader types of person, maybe we should add the “torch-bearer” in our recruitment efforts?

L'Arche Communication Team

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