Let X be a Banach space. We introduce a formal approach which seems to be useful in the study of those properties of operators on X which depend only on the norms of the images of elements. This approach is applied to the Daugavet equation for norms of operators; in particular we develop a general theory of narrow operators and rich subspaces of spaces X with the Daugavet property previously studied in the context of the classical spaces C(K) and L₁(μ).