This past week I read Paul Adam’s blogpost about Intercom’s way of organizing product teams and product processes, and I was excited about it for a full 48 hours. As I sent the link to our People Ops lead, I wrote, “Paul Adams is one of my new heroes right now.”

Then I paused. What do I mean by new heroes? Who are my not-so-new heroes?

Well, my not-so-new-to-me heroes are the great web/interaction designers who I’ve followed since my early 20’s. People like Jeffery Zeldman, Jason Santa Maria, Doug Bowman, Veerle Pieters, Frank Chimero – folks who are design craftsmen, who wrote thoughtfully and eloquently about the practice of design.

Who are my so-called new heroes then? Paul Adams, Randy Hunt, Ryan Singer, Julie Zhuo – these are people whose writing I read and then immediately looked up who they are, because oh-my-goodness-this-is-genius. Who are these people? These are people who manage creatives teams, but more importantly they shepherd a product development process. They think and write about how to get cross-functional creative teams to work together to build beautiful things.

Why am I so enamored with these people? Chiefly because they’ve gone before me in what I’m struggling with everyday at Sift. I struggle with getting people to trust the development process, even when it looks stochastic and unpredictable. I struggle with getting the team to move fast, but not break things, because breaking things means burdening the support team. I struggle with the idea of no longer being hands on, and being a facilitator of people and process. I struggle with the idea that I am a mentor now, even though I still feel like I have no idea what I am doing.

It seems that in the year and a half Sift needed me to transition from making things, to helping a team make things. My thinking and my struggles has changed, and who I look up to has changed accordingly.

Having new heroes means I am thinking about new things in new circumstances. Which is probably a good thing.

p.s. here are the omg-this-is-genius writing from each of my new heroes

• Paul Adams: http://blog.intercom.io/how-we-build-software/
  
• Julie Zhuo: https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass/owning-it-c1036506ccc9
• Randy Hunt’s Book, “Product Design for the Web”: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321929039/
• Ryan Singer: https://medium.com/@rjs/vital-elements-of-the-product-design-process-3db9cdaedc8b