The order in which you call people decides the legitimacy of the process. And there is almost always someone with veto power whom nobody has called.
An actor map is easy. An activation sequence is the hard part, and it is what decides whether the process arrives with a base or arrives blessed from above.
You map actors in a notebook or a Miro board nobody looks at again.
The map is made once, photographed and dies. What is needed is not the map: it is the order of the calls, and that never gets written down.
We got the yes from the city council and from then on it was all uphill.
A process that reaches the neighbourhood already blessed arrives as an institutional commission. Everything the community says will be read as consultation on a plan that already exists.
Nobody counted on whoever cleans and maintains.
They do not participate, they make no demands, and they have de facto veto power: if the solution complicates their job, it ceases to exist within three months.
Actors are placed by reasoning one by one across the four realms, the legitimacy of the process is weighed honestly, and only then is the order proposed.
The tool opens by asking what has changed in the territory since the last session: who you have talked to, what you have heard, who ought to be moved. The AI structures what you know; the territory corrects what you thought you knew.
Actor by actor: which realm they fall in, whether pure or hybrid, and why. And as you go it asks about the ones who have not come up: spaces, informal networks, absentees with veto power.
It proposes no sequence until you answer. If it is solid, you start with the pure actors, who are the ones who challenge you most. If it is weak, you start with the hybrids, who give you a base. They are opposite strategies.
Each step with its justification of why that order protects legitimacy. Before closing it is obliged to point out at least one absent actor. If it does not, demand it.
The quadrant with your actors placed and a numbered sequence: who first, who next, and why that order protects legitimacy.
1 · The three AMPA, together. They have never sat down at the same time. Without them there is no base.
2 · Benimaclet residents' association. After the joint meeting: if it comes in earlier, the third AMPA pulls out.
3 · The school heads. With the AMPA aligned, the conversation arrives with demand behind it.
4 · Maintenance and cleaning. The forgotten actor. Before designing anything physical.
… and the district last, on purpose: arriving with six aligned actors turns the conversation into a process to accompany, not a commission to grant.
The complete quadrant with the four realms, the hybridisation rings and the whole sequence. It is object A2 of the course. On the home page only the empty quadrant is shown.
Activating the institution before you have a citizen base kills the legitimacy of the process. You can decide to do it anyway (sometimes conditions force you to), but let it be a decision, not an oversight.
It is not a closed truth. An actor in a corner can be decisive. After taking the first step you almost always have to move someone: that means the map is alive.
If you write “stakeholders” it corrects you. A neighbour does not hold a stake in their neighbourhood: they live there. The word you use shapes the table you set up.
The value of this tool is not the map: it is the order. And an order you do not start walking is just another list.
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