Professor Jonathan Crego is travelling to Ireland on 9 November 2026 to work with colleagues from An Garda Síochána, helping them use their mobile kit with DecisionLab to explore how people make decisions, work together and learn from challenging situations.
The training will focus on practical use: setting up the equipment, capturing discussions and using the resulting analysis to support a thoughtful, evidence-based debrief.
Understanding how a group reaches a decision
DecisionLab brings attention to the thinking behind a decision. What did people notice? What assumptions shaped their response? Which perspectives were shared, challenged or left unexplored? These questions help facilitators move beyond the final answer and understand how a group reached it.
The mobile kit makes this approach portable, allowing colleagues to capture discussions for DecisionLab analysis in different teaching and exercise spaces. The aim of the visit is to build confidence in both the equipment and the method, enabling the Garda team to use it in their own delivery.
Bringing the conversation into the debrief
During an exercise, important learning often sits within the conversation: a concern raised briefly, a disagreement that changes the direction of a discussion, or an assumption that everyone appears to accept. These moments can be difficult for a facilitator to capture while also managing the session.
DecisionLab helps bring that material into the debrief. Its analysis provides a starting point for questions, reflection and discussion, with facilitators and participants interpreting the evidence in the context of the exercise.
For Jonathan, this reflects the purpose at the heart of Hydra's methodology: understanding why people make the decisions they do and creating the conditions in which they can examine those decisions openly.
Supporting the Garda team's own delivery
The visit is about putting that capability into the hands of the people delivering the learning. By combining a mobile system with practical facilitator training, the Garda team can develop its use of DecisionLab around its own scenarios, teaching priorities and professional experience.
Explore DecisionLab analysis and reporting, or contact the Hydra team to discuss its use in your exercises.