I picked up the term “creative analyst” in late June on the phone with Lyzasoft CEO Scott Davis. But what does he mean?

He described one analyst he’s known of. This guy arrived at a new job with strong recommendations for his ability to tear apart a dataset. He could slice, dice, build related charts and pivot tables — but only with canned data. That is, data someone had given him. This analyst struggled with synthesis — blending separate datasets, for example, or making a formula to derive values, or simply experimenting and asking unforeseen questions.

The ability to improvise and create something new is a “prime differentiator” among analysts, says Davis.

Many of these creative, synthesizing analysts, he says, also tend to feel they have a personal brand. They have a style of charting they prefer, for example, and they produce a distinct set of information that is uniquely attractive to their subscribers within the company.

“You can sort of think of them as publishers,” he says. “They create these things that are in some ways more useful than reports from the BI tool. And they gauge their effectiveness by how many people follow them.”

Such lists have been around quite a while. Before PCs, people did the same kind of thing in hardcopy, producing a dozen or two binders with a distribution list clipped on the cover.

There’s a future, too. Davis expects to see Enterprise 2.0 — social networking within businesses — grow fastest among these analysts. They already have the social habits: commenting, trust, wikis, etc.

He says, “A spreadmart is nothing but a primitive social networking mechanism.”

In the 32 days since the end of TDWI’s San Diego conference, one phrase has come to my mind repeatedly: “The soft stuff is always the important stuff,” uttered by Wayne Eckerson, director of TDWI Research. He was summing up a panel discussion, but the insight applies so broadly he could have used it for most other panels, too.

Leadership, persuasion, negotiation, generosity and knowledge and other such things all count at least as much as technology. The “soft stuff” is the axle grease, and yet the vehicle usually gets the credit. Bad grease makes any wheel worth a lot less.

Take one subject I wrote about in July, Government 2.0. It’s the idea that Web 2.0-inspired tools and attitudes will engender a new era of collaboration between officials and citizens. Each will benefit, and the public spirit will flower like it never has.

It’s a great idea and perhaps inevitable—despite an organization that promotes it. nGenera’s wizard is the visionary Don Tapscott, who does an admirable job of promotion. But when I probed for more than happy-talk, Tapscott’s little man behind the curtain—the Government 2.0 “program director”—did his feeble best to raise a stink when I didn’t accept his platitudes for my two BI This Week stories. Bad axle grease.

Take another subject: buying a house. My 85-year-old uncle tells about shopping for a house just north of New York City. Twenty years ago, he and his wife bought a house based on one visit in the dark. They trusted the agent. “We usually trusted others, and it usually worked out,” he says. Also, as a pioneering neurochemist and director for many years of a New York state lab, he erred on the side of generosity with those who asked for his help. He found that the goodwill generally comes back. Good axle grease.

If the soft stuff is so important, where does it fit on a balance sheet? Sorry, in the U.S. there’s no clear slot. You train a talented employee to analyze data, and you’re screwed if she leaves—as sure as if your warehouse flooded and several pallets of books got soaked. The books are written off like any asset, but not the valuable new analyst. Read all about it in Denise Caruso’s “The Real Value of Intangibles” in strategy+business magazine.

The “soft stuff is always the important stuff” quote was too good for the one place it would have fit in my story from San Diego. But I’ll find a fitting spot for it soon enough.

The business people didn’t show up to the meeting. They’d been invited to come and talk with IT about the new BI project and in the same stroke help launch it.

This is one of the first stories I ever heard about BI. Though daddy of data modelers Steve Hoberman didn’t say what happened next, I can imagine: all the usual suspects in business were soon rounded up for a later attempt.

The usual suspects are almost always the ones with positional power, the ones with staffs and budgets. But an article in a recent strategy+business magazine says that sometimes—such as when creating a politically risky new system, such as in BI, where powerful people fear embarrassment—what matters most is trust. Yes, an old story, but for once there’s a prescription.

Trust and authority don’t always go together like horse and carriage. Imagine a do-nothing VP who won the job with her Wharton MBA but who’s bailed out every day by a competent, trusted manager. (The VP’s only known contribution: “Be proactive, not reactive.”) I saw it, and you’ve probably seen things like it.

Author Karen Stephenson writes, “An ambitious undertaking is almost guaranteed to fizzle if it relies on people whose chief qualification is a high place in the pecking order. Whenever change is on the agenda, the power of relationships trumps the power of position.”

Trouble is, the most trusted and well connected people often fly below the radar. How do you find them? Finding them was part of Stephenson’s job as she she helped set up a group of citizens in the then-demoralized Philadelphia. The city had suffered a “40-year slide into economic lethargy and political corruption.”

In stage one, she amasses a a list of nominations, a “snowball sample.” She looked for referrals. She asked members and former members of Leadership Philadelphia, a citizen group, questions like “who do you consider highly innovative?; who brings ideas about the ‘big picture’ to the table?”

In stage two, she boiled down that big list to find the best connectors. Ultimately, she came up with a set of “heterarchies.”

…high-trust connections among particular groups of three or more organizations. These groups did not share ownership or governance structures — sometimes public agencies, private companies, and nonprofit organizations were in the same heterarchy — but the people involved all felt they needed each other to get things done. Thus, instead of staying within the boundaries of their workplace hierarchies, these highly connected people kept closely in touch with one another and collaborated regularly.

…

By contrast, when agencies and sectors retreat to their organizational silos and do not work together, local inertia tends to take hold.

…

The beauty of a heterarchy is the way in which it enables people with diverse skills, knowledge, and working styles to operate without favoring one organization or culture over another. As a network that both requires and generates trust, a heterarchy operates like an invisible human utility. It puts forth a force of enormous power that, like electricity, can’t be observed with the naked eye.

She found just a one percent overlap between her chosen connectors and a local magazine’s list of “Philadelphia’s 100 Most Powerful People.”

Interestingly, when the usual suspects saw her final list, they bristled. “Who are these people? And why do you think they’re important?”

My next question: what happens when those with positional power mount an insurgency?