Note to leaders: Lessons from Ukraine

In early 2019 the World Economic Forum (WEF) in its annual Global Risk Report warned all of us that escalating divisions amongst our Major Nations meant that we were no longer collaborating on addressing the world’s most pressing threats. For this reason, the WEF warned that we were potentially “sleepwalking towards crisis”. However, a global pandemic (Covid 19) then hit us about 10 months after this warning, and our attention and interest, rightly so, shifted.

Systemic Risk Management:  refers to the risk of a breakdown of an entire system rather than simply the failure of individual parts.

We are now, in the midst of a massive systemic risk failure with Ukraine being the ignition. The question becomes, what other failures, within Europe, Globally, within the Caribbean, and yes, within your institution may occur.

The most important feature of systemic risk is that the risk can spread from unhealthy processes, countries, institutions to relatively healthier processes, countries, institutions through any type of transmission mechanism.