Beginnings of All Teach-All Learn Journey

  Participation and leadership in All Teach All Learn communities of practice started for Dennis Wagner in kindergarten at the one-room Fertile Prairie country school in rural Southeastern Montana. In country school, upper grades help teach middle grades and middle grades help with youngest grades.  This photo was taken in 1975 when Dennis was in 7th grade (back row, 2nd from left). 

Forty five years later Dennis and his colleagues have had the good fortune to help lead talented and committed national and international communities of practice to increase life-saving organ donation, to improve air quality in Bangkok Thailand, to increase clinical performance and cost savings in thousands of clinical practices, to eliminate 2nd hand smoke in public spaces, schools & workplaces, and to help place improved cookstoves in the homes of millions of the world’s poorest families.

The multiple All Teach All Learn communities of practice have generated breakthrough results.  For example, working together, the Organ Donation Breakthrough Collaborative generated unprecedented increases in monthly U.S. organ donation rates between 2003 and 2007.   Tens of thousands of lives have been saved or enhanced through these lasting national increases in organ donation and transplantation.

The powerful, uplifting leadership mindsets and methods of Yes And Leadership are effective across diverse cultures.  Dennis Wagner and Kimberly Green-Goldsborough are pictured here as leaders of a US EPA technical assistance effort in Mae Moh, Thailand.  They are coaching a team from the Thai Pollution Control Department as they work to conduct an intensive and collaborative 2-day public meeting with ~50 local residents concerned about emissions from the Mae Moh power generating stations.

The powerful mindsets and methods used by communities of practice to generate breakthrough results are known, clear and can be replicated.  The national Partnership for Patients community of practice led by Dennis and others in the public and private sectors used these methods to achieve dramatic reductions in hospital patient harms, resulting in an estimated 2.1 million fewer harms, and saving an estimated 87,000 lives and $19.8 billion in costs.  Pictured at right are Dennis Wagner of Yes And Leadership, Jean Moody-Williams and Paul McGann MD,  members of the 3-person executive team then at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services who were recognized as Federal Employees of the Year in 2016 for leading this work.