Ralph Yirikian has been the most effective and influential corporate leader in independent Armenia.
Unfortunately for Armenia, there has not been much competition for such honors.
Yirikian—through his leadership of VivaCell-MTS communications company—has practically single-handedly introduced, defined and demonstrated the behavior of a contemporary global professional, bringing a refreshing and clarifying presence onto the scene of Armenia's closed, oligarch-dominated business world.
As General Manager of the Lebanon-based company (which includes K-Telecom, providing mobile communications for Karabakh), Yirikian has become as recognizable as any politician or celebrity in Armenia. His frequent appearances at public events make him a target for desperate appeals from the needy, for whom his face has become the symbol of compassion.
VivaCell was among the first (if not the very first) company to introduce Corporate Social Responsibility in Armenia. It has been five years since the first VivaCell phone call was placed in Armenia, and within its first three years the company had already invested about $11 million in social/cultural/educational programs.
As a result, Yirikian has received numerous awards, including the Movses Khorenatsi Medal from the president of the Republic of Armenia and the Saint Gregory the Illuminator decoration of honor from Catholicos Karekin II.
The company's reputation for benevolence seems also to have yielded commercial rewards. As of this year, VivaCell claims more that two million subscribers—about 80 percent of the market share, where before its appearance in Armenia, Armentel (now Beeline) had a monopoly on mobile communications. (A third provider, Orange, entered the market in 2009.)
Born and raised in Lebanon, Yirikian grew up like many diasporans, with impressions of Armenia as the land his grandparents might have rosily remembered (and which no longer exists), but with little relevant information to prepare him for his first visit, in 2001.
He describes his first encounter as "a psychological shock." What he found was not the idyllic "motherland," where open arms greeted all who wished to return, but rather a place with more concern for survival than for community, in a society struggling to yet overcome 70 years of communism's promises unfulfilled.
"All I saw was darkness, gloominess, sad people, unshaved men...," Yirkian recalls. "My mind failed to interconnect with my eyes."
But he met disappointment with optimism.
"We (Diaspora) have to be practical in the way we look at things," Yirikian says. "In the Diaspora, children are taught a certain 'Armenian' lifestyle, a culture, a way of thinking. All this builds up a fantasy world. Growing up in Armenian schools (abroad), not only do they teach you, they 'vaccinate' you (against the reality of anything unappealing about Armenia). Then when that person touches the soil of the homeland, reality is very different."
The gap between reality and perception, however, should not be polarizing, Yirikian says. It should, rather, be part of the "blending" of both.
Yirikian says the "winning ace" in the gamble to unite Armenia and Diaspora is to "appreciate the rich mix of both, and then bring both ends together."
In that effort, Yirikian, an outsider who has become a favored son, has established a business ethic in Armenia that blends the ideal Armenian character traits—loyalty, hard work and reliability—into the necessities of a 21st-century multi-national cooperation.
In appearance and behavior, VivaCell-MTS employees are expected to be exceptions to the Armenian norm. Of 1,200 staff, only seven are diasporans, and the average age company-wide is 32.
VivaCell has prided itself, too, on employing the disabled. Ramps for wheelchairs outside VivaCell offices are a public notice of the company's exceptional attitude in a society where "handicapped" usually means isolation and expulsion.
In a European or Western environment, VivaCell would be just another player, practicing good business principles well known and common to the environment. Here, however, its approach of making customer satisfaction a priority is revolutionary, in a consumer climate where customer complaints are usually taken as an insult or an attempt to take advantage of the infallible product provider.
The company, also, has distinguished itself by resisting doing business "the Armenian way"—meaning taking shortcuts (bribes) through under-the-table negotiations that cut out bureaucracy, but form unhealthy relations between those who benefit from kickbacks, and those who are beholden as a result.
"If you work clean and transparently, you won't have issues," says Yirikian, whose company, understandably, is of such high profile as to escape the common offers to do business in the shadows. He says that those who yield to the expectations of conducting business corruptly in Armenia have no right to complain about the inevitable result of being owned by the system.
For Yirikian, however, being an exception is not a matter of doing something extraordinary.
"We simply believe in what we do," says the 43-year-old general manager, who was first a company manager at age 26 in Cyprus.
For all his social concern and patriotism, Yirkian knows his place in the world of corporate business.
"Shareholders care about one thing: returns," he says. Still, he says he has been given liberty to run the company according to his own vision. Fortunately for Yirikian, the style of business he has cultivated at VivaCell has been good not only for Armenia, but also for company investors.
And, he says, life in Armenia has been good for his wife and his two children, ages 10 and six.
He calls his move to Armenia the "golden decision of my life," saying that he values the opportunity for his children "to breathe, to read, to learn, to study, to live the Armenian experience in the homeland."
Which is not to say that all is as "golden" as his preconceptions might have predicted.
"Expectations are not always met," Yirikian says. "This is the way life is. If you meet your expectations from the very first day, what do you have left to do?"
This notion, he says, is at the center of diasporan impatience.
"Armenia is 19 years old," Yirikian says. "Look 10 to 20 years from now (before making a judgment on progress). What is important is the vision in the long run. It is not enough to love your Armenian identity. You love your identity by giving your best effort (to make change)."
