Abb-d Taiyo | Open communication and a journey of control

Abb-d has a fascinating back-story which covers a basketball and music career before going into the design and advertising world.

He experienced a lot of bias both conscious and unconscious coming from a non-traditional background with a different sounding name – his Dad is Bengali and Mum is German. But this only spurred him on as he was so determined to work in design. Nothing was going to hold him back.

After a while, he became disillusioned by advertising and wanted to create something of his own. Along-came Driftime which he co-founded with his partner, Sara which started with a few paragraphs that become their manifesto. They were clear from the get-go who they did not want to work with. The rest fell out from there.

As a leader, Abb-d is passionate about giving people to space to make decisions. He talks practically about assessing risk and using ‘guardrails’ to protect people but also knowing when to let them go and set them free.

You will take away:

• Impact and their initial manifesto in setting up the company
• Their ‘non-committal’ phase in every project
• 4 days weeks and flexibility in practice
• His journey around letting go of control
• Managing clients and giving direct feedback during scope creep