2. Distinguish between interactions and roles

It's necessary to let go of our own preconceptions and apply as few prisms as possible to what we see.

The practice of operational mapping is a visual means of representing elements as they emerge, obtained by investigating with technical or human means. The crucial point is the ability to cross-reference the elements gathered, even though we are considering non-objective elements here, which adds an intrinsic difficulty to the exercise.

It's important to understand the interactions and roles of each player, by first setting down on paper the positions of all the protagonists. We can refer here to the chessboard method taught at Christian Harbulot's School of Economic Warfare (see Bibliography), which distinguishes between the committed, the passive, the hesitant, the opposing, the torn and the revolted, not forgetting the size of the pawns,...