Who Am I and What is The LeanWAM Principle?

Looks like you’ve stumbled across my webpage. I’m not sure what you misspelled in your Google search to get here, but I’m glad you made it.

My name is Jason Todd, and I created The LeanWAM Principle — a unique approach to work and asset management for smaller, lean organizations that lack the staffing levels necessary to support traditional work and asset management strategies, but still need to realize value from their CMMS software.

I have many years of experience utilizing CMMS software from just about every user role you can imagine in industries such as steel production, power generation, and municipal utilities. I’ve been the journeyman maintenance person receiving preventative and predictive maintenance work orders and writing reactive or repair work orders to document maintenance against assets. I’ve been the user designing new preventative maintenance programs or revising tasks and instructions on existing ones. I’ve also served as a maintenance supervisor using CMMS software to plan and schedule work, manage the backlog, perform QA/QC on completed work, run reports, review key performance metrics, and pull up repair history to support capital replacement justifications. I’ve led CMMS implementation projects from scratch, and I currently administer work and asset management efforts at a medium-sized water district.

It’s safe to say I have an intimate understanding of what work and asset management software needs to deliver to every level of an organization — from the field worker to the supervisor, up to the executive team who must make data-driven decisions regarding budgets, investments, and how to staff and utilize labor resources. I also know how many people it really takes to do work and asset management “right.”

The problem is, I’ve never been employed by an organization that was staffed properly to do this “right.” And as I looked around at similar agencies and industries, I started to see a pattern. Some organizations were robust and well-funded enough to truly do high-level asset management — and then there were the rest of us, wringing our hands in frustration because we couldn’t apply industry best practices due to the lean nature of our organizations.

So I challenged myself with these questions:
If I can’t do it right, how can I do the best version of wrong?
Is there a way to design a strategy that delivers value despite the limitations my lean organization imposes on me?
Is “close enough for government work” really close enough for government work?

Surprisingly, there were answers. There was a way to deliver the most important aspects of work and asset management that — while not perfect — met the needs of my organization.

I know there are leaders I deeply respect — whose books I’ve read, whose videos I’ve watched, and whose keynote speeches I’ve applauded at large reliability conferences — who might stumble upon my LeanWAM Principle and be appalled, dismissing it as completely wrong. And for an organization that isn’t understaffed, that would be valid criticism. But I didn’t set out to do it the right way. The right way was impossible given the rules of the game I was being forced to play.

So stick with me — we can all enjoy being “wrong” together. You’ll see that with my version of wrong, your work and asset management software will do more than you dreamed it could, with fewer staff than you thought possible. And it might — just might — deliver the necessary value despite being understaffed.

Okay, now back to your Google search and fix whatever typo landed you here. That Amazon wish list isn’t going to populate itself.