The queen
Strategy & management
Moves any distance, in any direction.
Strategy sets the direction every other piece follows. It has the widest reach, and the most to lose when it is misplaced.
Corporate strategy, operating models, market entry
Multidisciplinary consulting. Lagos, working across Africa.
Business is played on the whole board.
Most advisers see the one square they specialise in. We read the whole position, and move strategy, design, brand, technology, people and finance as one team toward your objective.
Thinking beyond boxes.
Why we exist
A game played with one piece is already lost.
Advice usually arrives in pieces, from firms that never sit at the same board. Execution fails in the gaps between them.
Strategy without designA plan that reads well in the boardroom and never reaches the customer.
Design without financeA product people love that the business cannot afford to run.
Technology without peopleNew systems, old habits, and a transformation programme nobody uses.
Our answerOne team that plays every piece, from the first question to the result.
What we do
Six disciplines. Six pieces. One game.
Chess has exactly six kinds of piece, each with its own way of moving. So does a business. Hover or tap a piece to see how it moves.
The knight
Design thinking
The only piece that jumps.
Design thinking goes around obstacles instead of through them. It reaches the squares straight-line thinking cannot.
Service design, customer journeys, innovation sprints
The bishop
Brand & marketing
Moves on the diagonal, from long range.
Brand shapes perception from a distance, and from an angle competitors do not see coming.
Brand architecture, identity, campaigns
The king
Technology
Moves one square at a time, and must never fall.
Core systems are the piece everything depends on. We move them deliberately and we protect them.
Transformation roadmaps, systems, adoption
The pawn
People & HR
Moves forward, and can become any piece.
People are the structure of every game. Develop them well and a pawn becomes a queen.
Organisation design, culture, leadership
The rook
Finance
Moves in straight, unbroken lines.
Finance gives the business its structure and staying power: clear lines, open files, no guesswork.
Modelling, business cases, capital readiness
How it works
Bring us the position, not the piece.
Choose a challenge. The board shows which pieces we bring into play, and what each one is there to do.
The Polymath Method
Four moves. A loop, not a handoff.
In chess, to develop is to bring your pieces into play. It is also the last thing we do with your team.
Diagnose
Read the board. We immerse in your business, market and organisation, and start with better questions.
Design
Plan the combination. One team shapes a single solution in which every piece supports the others.
Deliver
Make the moves. We stay through implementation. No decks left behind for someone else to play.
Develop
Train the player. We build your team’s capability so you need us less over time.
What we learn in Develop feeds the next Diagnose.
Who we serve
Every stage of the game.
The opening
Startups
The first moves decide the shape of the game: direction, brand clarity and a model that can carry investment.
The middlegame
SMEs
The board is crowded and every move counts. Structure that supports scale without slowing you down.
Positional play
Corporates & groups
Long plans inside real constraints: transformation, governance and organisational agility.
Many boards at once
Global brands
Playing several markets at the same time. Entry strategy and cultural intelligence for Africa.
Rules we play by
Confidence built on method, not borrowed reputation.
We are a young practice, and we will not claim a track record we have not earned. What we offer is a disciplined method, senior attention on every engagement, and success measures agreed before the first move.
IntegrationStrategy sessions include designers. Design reviews include finance.
Intellectual courageWe challenge assumptions, including our own, and say so when we are wrong.
Human-centredEvery recommendation is tested against the people who have to live with it.
Measurable impactWe define what winning looks like before we start, and report against it honestly.
Capability transferWe leave your team stronger than we found it.
Founder & Managing Partner
Daniel C. Katchy
A strategist whose work sits where brand intelligence, management consulting and design thinking meet. His career spans advertising, financial services, FMCG and corporate communications, and he has led brand and communications work for organisations including Nestlé CWAR brands, Lafarge Africa, PZ Cussons, Union Bank, Sterling Bank, Globacom and FirstBank Nigeria.
He founded The Polymath Consults on a simple conviction: the hardest business problems need people who can play every piece on the board.
- FIMC
- CMC, ICMCI
- ANIPR
- MBA
Your move
Book a diagnostic conversation.
Tell us the position you are in. We will come back with the questions we would ask first and the pieces we would bring into play.