Hullabalog is pleased to welcome Tiffany Sunday ’89. Tiffany is Founder of Dillon 5, a product development and marketing strategy company in Dallas. Tiffany graduated from Texas A&M with a degree in Communications and later obtained an MBA from SMU. She has over twenty years’ experience developing and launching new products in the marketplace. Tiffany is an active speaker, a strong supporter of the startup community, and has been a featured guest on CNN 1190.  ♦

Enjoy her post and please share your comments.

“Lack of Focus” has become a media hot topic. Recently, the Wall Street Journal and FastCompany ran articles about employees and families having technology induced ADD from emails and texting. These articles brought to light the negative impacts of America’s love affair with its iPhones and Blackberries. America’s hyper focused PDA’s has created an inverse lack of focus when working. Too many ideas, too many comments, feedback and newsfeeds coming at companies and employees at lightning speed.

Lack of focus can have a negative impact on product development. Companies, especially startups, often jump from one “great” idea to the next rather than stopping to review the big picture and see if these ideas really matter to product development. 37 Signals said it best in their first book, Getting Real, “figure out what matters and leave out the rest”. The quote is paraphrased, but you get the message. Lack of focus can delay product development and the product’s market launch. Focus is placing importance on having a strategic plan to ensure the company’s market strategy is not a knee jerk reaction to your competitors , the economy and internet chatter.

Before your company starts down the product development path – call an impromptu meeting and ask everyone “why” the company is developing the product or service. What is the basis of the “why”? Who will purchase the product? How will this product improve your customers’ lives? Will the product be short lived or evolve over time?

Over the years, we’ve worked with clients that lacked focus and jump from one product idea to another only to have competitors enter the market place before they could make their minds up. Staying focus takes discipline, similar to training for a marathon.  Companies must stay focused on what matters most to reach their goal of developing and launching  successful products in the marketplace.

To learn more about Tiffany and Dillon 5, please visit http://www.dillon5.com. Tiffany can be reached via email at tiffany@dillon5.com.

Would you like to share your professional experiences and business expertise with other Aggies?  Hullabalog welcomes and relies on guest bloggers.  Drop me a note at msnyder91@hullabalog.com if you’d like to contribute some content. Once or frequently, it’s up to you.

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