BPL #3: Counter-Errorism and A Culture of Safety with Gareth Lock

The Debrief with Jon Becker

My guest today is Gareth Lock. Gareth spent 25 years in the Royal Air Force as a flight instructor, a navigator on C-130 Hercules, a systems engineer and a requirements manager. Following his retirement from the RAF in 2015 he started work in high-risk industries teaching Human Factors and Crew Resource Management (CRM). Eventually Gareth turned his attention to diving, applying a military systems approach to diving risk management by creating an organization called The Human Diver which is focused on what they describe as Counter-Errorism. Specifically, Gareth and his team provides training globally to high reliability and high-risk organizations on leadership, culture, and practical measures to improve operator safety. In 2019 Gareth led a team of military experts to undertake a review of UK military diving with the goal of improving diver safety. Gareth has worked with the US National Parks Service Submerged Resource Centre (Denver, CO), National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd (NZ), and the American Academy of Underwater Sciences (USA) to provide human factors training and high-performance team development courses.

Gareth is the author of the book Under Pressure – Diving Deeper with Human Factors which looks at case studies of near disasters and applies academic theory to understanding how we can better communicate and lead those in high risk/high reliability units.

I am excited to have Gareth on because his views of human fallibility, although rooted in diving, have broad lessons to teach anyone who leads others, especially those working in high-risk areas.
Contact Information
www.thehumandiver.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garethlock/

Links
Compliance provides an illusion of safety in diving

Dave Snowden’s paper on ‘Knowledge without context is meaningless’ – Complex acts of knowing.

Safety Culture & Trade-offs – Risk management in a dynamic society: a modelling problem – Jens Rasmussen paper

Red Teaming Thinking

Risk Savvy – Risk vs Uncertainty

Interpersonal Skills Lab

The training I offer across multiple domains which has no/limited professional jeopardy
Blog about Learning from Near Misses. Were you lucky or good?

Local Rationality and Hindsight