Gareth Lock

Training, equipment, staffing, information, guidance, organisation, infrastructure, logistics and integration all affect whether people can put learning to work. When those parts do not fit together, staff end up compensating for the gaps.

Drawing on military procurement, Lock describes the TEPIDOIL framework and argues that professional-development programmes cannot succeed through training alone. They urge organisations to think in terms of socio-technical systems, not isolated components.

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A fictional setting can expose communication and coordination problems when people have to act under time pressure with incomplete, distributed information, without letting specialist knowledge conceal those behaviours.

In the LAB, firefighters and railway operations managers took part in a simulated space mission from separate workstations.

• The exercise could not be paused, information was split between participants, and the scenario introduced ambiguity and competing goals.
• Lock says a debrief using black-box data helped participants see the exercise’s value.

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They combine participants’ reflections, observer input, performance data and replay, then repeat the exercise so a team can compare what changed. The point is not just to identify a problem, but to give people a way to test a different behaviour.

After each LAB mission, participants contribute to a structured debrief, an observer uses behavioural markers, and the facilitator connects events to the team’s work.

• The team then runs another mission and compares its results.
• Lock sums up the cycle as “Measure, practice, debrief, repeat.”

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Their posts connect the approach to fire and rail operations and describe developing instructors to teach it. A career retrospective traces this interest partly to a close-call dive and to noticing that diving lacked some of the incident-learning practices they knew from aviation.

Lock says they wrote a 2011 white paper on applying HFACS to diving safety after the 2005 Yukon dive, and later built The Human Diver around human factors and crew resource management training. In a separate post, they say the same teamwork challenges and solutions can appear across domains.

The retrospective traces a path from applying lessons from aviation to diving safety toward training and examples intended for both diving and non-diving teams.

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Start here for the timeline behind The Human Diver.

A reflective post uses a San Diego instructor-assessment trip to trace Gareth Lock’s path: seeing Top Gun in 1988, joining the RAF in 1989, learning to dive in 1999, a close call on the USS Yukon in 2005, a 2011 HFACS white paper, a Cranfield PhD started in 2012 and later abandoned, and The Human Diver’s formation in 2016.

• It also lists later milestones: eLearning, online and in-person Human Factors in Diving conferences, the Learning from Emergent Outcomes course, awards, ten instructors across seven countries, the book Under Pressure, the documentary If Only..., and a human factors section in Canadian occupational diving standards.
• The detail makes the commercial work concrete and shows diving as the testbed, not the limit.

For brands planning a campaign

For a thought-leadership webinar, this is a personal-origin story: a near-miss, an aviation-derived method and a training business built to stop others repeating the same mistakes. It offers a human story without a sales pitch.

Drawing on five years in military procurement, Gareth Lock argues that organisations developing capability are not simply buying a course, programme or technology.

• The post walks through the TEPIDOIL(-I) framework — Training, Equipment, Personnel, Information, Doctrine and Concepts, Organisation, Infrastructure, Logistics, Integration — and notes that cost is not one of the headings.
• A Defence Lines of Development board only signs off when all owners are satisfied.
• Lock applies that logic to professional capability development such as HOP, leadership, incident investigation and CRM, arguing that unaligned elements leave people to close gaps themselves, leading to dysfunction, wasted money and harm.
• The closing instruction: think in socio-technical systems, not individual elements.

For brands planning a campaign

Positions a simulation workshop as capability building, not a one-off training day. It gives buyers a frame for budget conversations: what else must be in place for the workshop to survive contact with the real organisation?

Gareth Lock describes sending German firefighters and railway operations managers through a simulated space mission.

• The firefighters were sceptical; the rail managers doubted they had a non-technical skills problem.
• After a second ten-minute mission and a targeted debrief with black-box data, both groups saw the benefit.
• The method relies on cognitive rather than physical fidelity: separate workstations, deliberately split information, real-time scenarios that cannot be paused, increasing complexity and built-in ambiguity that provokes miscommunication and assumptions.
• With no technical domain to retreat into, everyone starts incompetent and error has nowhere to hide.
• The post includes a quote from wildland fire incident commander Jayson Coil: "What we learned in one day in the LAB would have taken us three days on the fire ground training."

For brands planning a campaign

A thought-leadership webinar can demonstrate the method through a single scenario design: distributed information, competing goals, a short briefing and a debrief that resists blame. The cross-industry example shows that the approach travels.

Gareth Lock contrasts traditional interpersonal skills training — where an observer’s impressions are negotiated and often survive the day, especially when rank influences who speaks — with the LAB’s repeated measurement cycle.

• Each mission produces performance data alongside facilitator, observer and team-member opinions.
• A behavioural marker scheme gives observers a reference point; think-write-share brings in individual perspectives; mission data and replay allow cross-checking.
• Teams run the mission again and compare their scores across cycles, making behaviour change visible within a day.
• Lock’s key claim: people find it harder to argue with their own numbers than with a trainer’s subjective judgement.
• The post ends with two practical questions: how do you know whether your team’s teamwork is improving, and how do you know where the gaps are?

For brands planning a campaign

A measurement-focused story for a workshop proposal. It supports a session showing how data, replay and structured debrief reduce the credibility gap that blocks investment in non-technical skills training.

It explains how the training scales and what assessment looks like in practice.

Gareth Lock describes undertaking the final assessment for Dan Temple as part of Temple’s trainer/facilitator development to deliver interpersonal skills LAB-based training.

• The post notes Temple’s use of human factors and non-technical skills theory, practical stories, operational experience, observations from the space-based serious game, and 'scores on the doors' relating to behaviours and interactions.
• Lock uses the occasion to argue that CRM and non-technical skills are not limited to high-risk industries: the same challenges and solutions appear across domains and companies.
• The invitation is for teams, senior leadership teams or executive teams to join a development programme designed so participants cannot hide from the reflection the sessions hold up.

For brands planning a campaign

Supports a train-the-trainer or facilitator-development angle: a brand can recruit a programme that certifies internal people, not just a one-off event. It also shows Gareth Lock publicly assessing and promoting other facilitators, a useful signal for scaling a workshop series.

Their recurring argument is that miscommunication, assumptions and distributed information create failure conditions that technical expertise can mask. They take people out of their technical domain to make non-technical behaviours visible and coachable.

For brands planning a campaign

For a human factors or safety-training brand, this topic can anchor a webinar or workshop for teams that do not see themselves as high-risk. The hook reaches beyond diving: technical expertise can mask teamwork problems.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3

Removing the technical domain brings mistakes and non-technical behaviours to the surface. The LAB format uses a serious game with increasing complexity, designed ambiguity and conditions that provoke miscommunication and assumptions.

Serious-game missions, distributed information, real-time scenarios and facilitator debriefs.

The post reports scepticism from firefighters and rail operations managers before the session. The method depends on participants accepting a fictional setting.

For brands planning a campaign

A brand can use this as a practical webinar demonstration or workshop preview, showing how removing technical camouflage reveals communication gaps.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3

Participants see their scores across repeated missions, making behaviour change visible within a day and the lesson harder to discount. The debrief translates simulation events into the team's own workplace language.

Measure, practise, debrief, repeat; behavioural marker scheme; think-write-share.

For brands planning a campaign

For a safety or learning-and-development brand, this supports a thought-leadership angle on measurement: how teams can tell whether teamwork is improving. It can frame a workshop around before-and-after behaviour data rather than subjective feedback.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3

The post lists Training, Equipment, Personnel, Information, Doctrine and Concepts, Organisation, Infrastructure, Logistics and Integration, and notes that cost was not one of the headings. When these elements are misaligned, the system becomes dysfunctional, people get hurt, money is wasted and staff close gaps themselves.

TEPIDOIL / DLOD-style capability framework and checklist requirements review.

The post does not name specific procurement programmes, clients or cost data.

For brands planning a campaign

A brand selling capability development, HOP, leadership, investigation or CRM can use this as a diagnostic framework for a webinar or workshop: ask what else must be resourced for training to build capability.

Examples: Source 1

The post lists a Learning from Emergent Outcomes course, a white paper on applying HFACS to diving safety, academic papers, and a documentary and workbook used in training. The recurring argument: study incidents as system outcomes, not individual blame.

The post is a retrospective that mentions awards and publications but does not provide the papers, award citations or documentary itself.

For brands planning a campaign

A brand in safety investigation or operational learning can build a webinar around the shift from blame to system learning, using diving's late adoption of these ideas as the story.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

The book Under Pressure was published in 2019, with more books planned, and a human factors/CRM section has been incorporated into Canadian occupational diving standards.

Courses, eLearning, conferences, books, a documentary and standards work.

The post is self-reported; ask for verification of dates and book, award and conference details.

For brands planning a campaign

For a brand, this is evidence of a long-running body of work and a distributed instructor network, useful for co-hosted webinars, conference partnerships or train-the-trainer content. The topic is both the subject matter and the story of building a field.

Examples: Source 1

Lock argues that the same challenges and solutions appear across domains and companies.

The cross-domain evidence is practitioner testimony and trainer observation. Ask for comparative performance data across sectors.

For brands planning a campaign

Brands can evaluate Gareth Lock for non-diving briefs, not only diving audiences. The campaign angle is cross-industry transfer: a diving-derived method applied to fire, rail, corporate leadership or safety teams.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

The business delivers human factors, crew resource management and non-technical skills training, with ten instructors across Australia, Egypt, Poland, the UK, Mexico, the USA and Brazil.

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Ask Lock about their ownership or role in the business.

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Ask Lock about their relationship to the program.

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Ask when their employment ended.

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Their four pillars — clear intent, situational awareness, mutual support and debrief culture — overlap with Lock's interests in information sharing, psychological safety and structured debriefs. Both write for safety, aviation and other high-reliability audiences.

Williams draws on fighter aviation and frames the work as leadership in uncertainty, aimed at keynote and workshop bookings for safety-critical organisations.

• Lock's writing is more method-led, covering specific simulation design, behavioural markers and performance data teams use to check whether their teamwork is improving.
• Williams argues for clarity; Lock shows teams the numbers behind their behaviour.

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They write about teaching, learning design and the value of stepping outside a specialism. This is close to Lock's path from diving instruction into human factors training and their interest in how trainers are developed.

Christian's posts cover the craft and community of learning and development: returning to teach an introductory course, thanking a mentor and reflecting on career change.

• Lock writes about safety and non-technical skills under operational pressure.
• Follow Christian for the teaching craft itself; follow Lock for what it looks like inside safety-critical work.

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Both say a course introduces ideas but does not change behaviour unless teams reinforce those behaviours over time. Both warn that overstretched managers cannot carry that reinforcement alone.

Radford applies this approach to sales teams and sales leadership, with a diagnostic scorecard and shared sales language as the remedy.

• Lock applies it to safety-critical operations, using practice under simulated pressure, performance data and repeated debriefs.
• Radford's audience is sales enablement; Lock's is diving, fire, rail, aviation and other high-consequence teams.

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Williams frames leadership around clear intent, situational awareness, mutual support and debrief culture, and asks leaders to make priorities and acceptable tradeoffs clear so teams can act when conditions change. That gives an event focused on leadership decisions a direct message to build around.

Choose Gareth Lock when the buyer wants participants to practise and measure team behaviours, rather than mainly hear a leadership framework. The posts do not describe a simulation with distributed information, repeat runs and performance-data debriefs—the distinctive workshop method in their work.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3 · Source 4

Christian’s post draws on returning to teach an introductory scuba course after years of teaching at a more advanced level, using the experience to argue that learning designers benefit from stretching beyond their specialties. That perspective could suit a webinar for learning professionals redesigning training.

The posts focus on teaching and the learning-design career, not on high-reliability team performance, safety investigation or measured non-technical-skills practice. For a safety training buyer seeking a simulation-based workshop grounded in operational teamwork, Gareth Lock is the closer match.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3 · Source 4

Radford’s posts argue that workshops alone do not sustain behaviour change: teams also need shared language, clear behavioural expectations, regular manager conversations and reinforcement built into business routines. That is a more direct choice for a sales-enablement webinar or programme about sustaining training on the job.

The reviewed work addresses sales coaching and reinforcement, not safety-critical operations or simulation-based non-technical-skills training. Radford is a better choice for sales performance; Gareth Lock is better aligned with the stated human-factors and high-reliability brief.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3 · Source 4