Strategy fails in ways that feel mysterious: the plan looked solid, the logic was sound, and yet reality does something else.

I’m joined by Luiz von Paumgartten, a patent attorney who has spent the last decade developing a model he calls Natural Reality. Using a handful of diagrams and plain language, we dig into “meaning” (everything produced inside your mind) versus “happening” (uninterpreted action in the world). We sharpen the map-territory distinction, the idea that your mind is bounded by an electromagnetic interface, and why light matters as the boundary where happenings become perceptions and intentions become actions.

The conversation turns practical fast: if minds sit in parallel, then communication is not the transfer of meaning. It is the sharing of expressions that each listener must interpret using their own rules, expectations, and perspective. That single point- meaning doesn’t transfer- helps explain misalignment in leadership, friction in organisational strategy, and why people can hear the same words and walk away with different realities. We also connect this to perspective change, accumulated tension, and the John Boyd OODA loop style of sensemaking and orientation.

If you want clearer thinking about strategy, communication, and decision-making under uncertainty, you’ll get a fresh mental model to test immediately. Subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review with the biggest “misinterpretation” you’ve seen at work.

Connect with Luiz here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vonpaumgartten/
Here are The Abstractionist’s Papers
Find more of his work here: https://welcometothebluespace.com/

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🔗 Full episodes, show notes, and resources: https://www.lbiconsulting.com/strategymeetsreality-podcast

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Connect with host Mike Jones → https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-h-jones/