It's funny the timing of this article. I was just talking with my wife about Sears and how it seems they have no future, it's only a matter of time before the Sears retail store as we know it will no longer exist. Then to read a headline about Sears disrupting? Heck ya I'm interested.

The company has launched a Seattle office, and recruited retail tech execs to help it get a handle on the data it has amassed from the 40,000+ daily service queries its Home Services group collects on washing machines, refrigerators, and other appliances. It turns out that the industry average is that about 1 out of every 4 customers don’t get their appliance woes fixed on the first visit.

“Each truck carries about 400 parts, yet those annual service calls require something like 168,000 different parts,” explained Arun Arora, the group’s president. “We’d have to have our 7,000 certified technicians driving semis around to anticipate them.”

"Big data" has so many applications and to see Sears trying to disrupt in a way that doesn't make headlines is impressive. This kind of disruption, even though on the surface looks like a cost-savings initiative, can revolutionize the service of appliances. Why does that matter? Because loyalty is the name of the game. If they make the experience of owning a machine better, even when it is getting old and needs some new life breathed into it, they can increase their base of loyal active customers.

The more customers that are active with a company the more they will make. If Sears can increase the number of loyal customers by offering a superior customer experience of ownership, they can drive more sales in other areas. It is the process of rebuilding trust with a brand. If I knew buying an oven will have a longer shelf-life and the company where I was buying it can make that happen, then it makes where I buy more interesting.

So many times in the retail space it comes down to price. Everyone sells ovens and mostly from the same manufacturers, so there is very little to differentiate. The easiest rode to differentiation is price. The problem is when competing on price, the business can never win. They are not cultivating loyal customers, in fact they are probably selling to the exact wrong customer. If a customer is only going to choose on price, they are by definition not loyal customers. If Sears can differentiate beyond price and experience in the stores, they can grow their loyal database. That's a big win.

Lampert runs Sears like a hedge fund portfolio, with dozens of autonomous businesses competing for his attention and money. An outspoken advocate of free-market economics and fan of the novelist Ayn Rand, he created the model because he expected the invisible hand of the market to drive better results. If the company’s leaders were told to act selfishly, he argued, they would run their divisions in a rational manner, boosting overall performance.

It amazes me there are not more companies copying what Apple has done from an organizational structure. Apple doesn't let each business unit run as an individual business, in fact they don't even own their own P&L. This allows them to move resources and work more autonomously as a team, rather than infighting and creating different tribes within the organization.

The divisions turned against each other—and Sears and Kmart, the overarching brands, suffered. Interviews with more than 40 former executives, many of whom sat at the highest levels of the company, paint a picture of a business that’s ravaged by infighting as its divisions battle over fewer resources…. [one former executive said it created a] “warring tribes” culture. “If you were in a different business unit, we were in two competing companies,” he says. “Cooperation and collaboration aren’t there.”

This doesn't surprise me at all. I've seen it many times in my career in smaller organizations, watching all the tribes compete with each other. The battle is outside of the organization, not within.