Cole Napper: How Gen AI and Talent Intelligence Are Transforming Business

Intro: [00:00:05] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Trisha Stetzel: [00:00:16] I’m excited about my guest today. Cole Napper, VP of research, innovation and Talent Insights at LightCast a globally recognized voice in labor market intelligence, people analytics, workforce planning, and talent and Talent intelligence. Cole’s led people analytics functions across brands like Fedex, Toyota, PepsiCo, Texas Instruments and Grainger, and he advises HR tech startups on applying gen AI to real business problems. He’s also the principle behind directionally correct. The number one people analytics podcast and newsletter, and the author of People Analytics Using data driven HR and Gen AI as a business asset. From translating talent data for investors to building skill based organizations, Cole’s work flips HR from cost center to profit center. We’re digging into the fault lines shaping the future of work, geopolitics, AI, and demographics and what leaders should know. Cole, welcome to the show.

Cole Napper: [00:01:24] Yeah, thanks for having me, Trisha.

Trisha Stetzel: [00:01:26] Yeah. So you didn’t know I was going to do all that, did you?

Cole Napper: [00:01:29] That was quite the mouthful.

Trisha Stetzel: [00:01:31] Yeah. It was. Well, I’m super excited about having you on the show today. Cole, why don’t we dive into who Cole is? So tell us a little bit more about you.

Cole Napper: [00:01:39] Well, I think, first of all, and I hope you guys won’t hold this against me, but I’m based in Dallas. And so I know there’s the Houston Dallas rivalry, but, you know, don’t hold that against me. But. So I have a background with a PhD in industrial organizational psychology, as you mentioned in your intro. Um, you know, I’ve been working in the the people analytics, talent, intelligence, labor market space for over 15 years and, uh, been at a variety of large multinational companies now more of a research capacity for again, like cast kind of the global leader in labor market intelligence and skills for organizations. And I get to do a lot of really cool work. And then again, recently released the book two weeks, two months ago, uh, called People Analytics. And so really excited to talk to you today, Trisha.

Trisha Stetzel: [00:02:29] Yeah, fantastic, I love it. So tell us, uh, let’s dive into a little more detail around like, cast, what services are you providing and the customers that you’re supporting.

Cole Napper: [00:02:40] Yeah. So like, cast, uh, the company formed about 20 years ago. So we’re the longest standing labor market intelligence provider. And depending on the type of organization you are, we support it in different ways. And so we got our start working with higher education and the public sector. So municipal, state and federal level workers trying to understand and bring about in the education sphere, tying the curriculums that that universities have to the jobs that are being hired for in the labor market, in the public sector, it’s about making the locations in which you reside desirable for investment in by organizations, into the talent and skills located in the area, and even being able to, you know, get, um, organizations to invest in the area. Um, like, we do a lot of work now with organizations that are trying to attract data centers and things like that, or regions that are trying to attract that. And then for for big organizations, it’s about understanding the skills of their workforce, investing in things like how is AI going to transform your workforce in the future and and looking at, you know, what is the supply and demand levers that and how are they impacting organizations ability to attract talent, develop them and upskill them for the jobs of tomorrow.

Trisha Stetzel: [00:03:57] Okay, so first off, we’re not going to hold it against you that you’re in Dallas. I was actually born and raised in North Texas, so it’s okay. We can still be friends.

Cole Napper: [00:04:07] You can’t even call it Dallas. You can only call it North Texas just to be diplomatic, you know.

Trisha Stetzel: [00:04:11] Well, I do, and, you know, my mom is the biggest Cowboys fan on the planet. And we always try to root for the, you know, the home team, which has not been very much fun the last couple of years. So, um, okay, lots of technical stuff there. But before we even dive into coal, like the technical aspect of what you’re doing, what do you find are the biggest fault lines, uh, in the labor market right now? And how should we actually interpret them?

Cole Napper: [00:04:41] Yeah, this this is a huge question for organizations. And so one of the things I’ve been kind of out on a speaking tour lately that I’ve been talking about is every organization, again, the ones I mentioned earlier, higher education, public sector and private sector enterprise organizations is every one of them is experiencing at least one of these three fault lines and sometimes two or more. And it is. How are geopolitics affecting the labor market and their ability to acquire talent? Are you having supply chain disruptions or tariffs impacting you or interest rates impacting you? Is immigration impacting your ability to hire? All of these things that historically, you know, we’ve kind of taken for granted. It feels like the ground is shifting beneath our feet while we’re trying to operate. And so that’s why we’ve been using the metaphor of fault line. The second is AI disruption, right? Many jobs, especially white collar jobs right now, are people are asking the question, can an AI do components of this job? Maybe particular tasks or even whole end to end processes as good or better than a human being? And so AI disruption is cutting across the workforce in a variety of capacities, and the last is labor shortages. And if you think about healthcare, construction, manufacturing and manufacturing, especially kind of overlaying with the geopolitical component, a lot of reshoring is going on right now in the United States. It’s cutting across a lot of different industries and sectors. And the ability, I think most of us are used to the ability. If you make a job postings that you can just go hire someone and they’re going to have the skills and they’re going to accept the wages that are available. And one of the things that we’re seeing with the retirement of baby boomers and Gen Z entering the workforce is a much smaller generation than prior generations. We’re having labor shortages for the first time, basically since the Industrial Revolution. And so this is a really challenging time for organizations. And in the labor market is right in the center of those issues.

Trisha Stetzel: [00:06:45] Yeah, I think all of this is really resonating. I know with me in particular and those who are, um, the broader part of my audience who’s listening today. So we talked a little bit or in your intro, uh, about cost Center versus, um, an an actual investment, right. Uh, or profit center when we talk about HR. So can you dig into that a little bit?

Cole Napper: [00:07:13] Yeah. When I think about, um, you know, if you took a business 101 class, one of one of the things that you would learn is, you know, try to maximize revenue and minimize overhead, right. And one of the things when you think about traditional HR, it has always been considered a cost center, i.e. overhead. And so traditional business 101 playbook is you want to minimize that as much as possible. Now, one of the kind of the burgeoning trends that you’ve seen over the last 15 years or so is how human capital is a key differentiator for organizations. And so that kind of goes in the face of, well, this is just overhead. This is something you can minimize. Perhaps it is a competitive differentiator for businesses. And so one of the things that I’ve been challenging, the HR, I’ve been challenging businesses themselves. And the HR functions in two different ways. One, the HR function is saying you need to move from being a cost center to a profit center. And to do that, you have to show the value of the human capital that you’re bringing in, that you’re upskilling, that you’re training for organizations to organizations themselves, is they need to recognize the value of that human capital and invest in it as if it’s a key differentiator for that organization. And so this is sort of a mindset shift that’s been going on for quite some time. But with the introduction of generative AI into the equation, I think a lot of people have felt sort of in a tizzy about this. It’s like, do humans still matter? What role do they play? And so what I did is I went systematically through everything that HR does and I show here’s how you add value with it today. Pre generative AI. And here’s how it’s going to continue to add value with generative AI into the equation. Just to give people a playbook of hey this isn’t something you need to be scared of. This is something that you can be proactive and be, um, you know, be an early adopter and really show that this is a key differentiator for your organization.

Trisha Stetzel: [00:09:09] Yeah. So that playbook is really important. I think there are still people out there, Cole, who are afraid of AI and don’t know exactly what it is. So how what would you suggest as like a first step to getting comfortable with what I mean? We all know what AI means, but do we know what it actually is? So where would you where would you start if you were? Yeah.

Cole Napper: [00:09:35] Well, AI is a weird technology in the sense that I’ve been using this example of like a pencil never taught you how to write, but AI can teach you how to use AI, and as far as I know, it’s the first tool that can ever do that. So the thing I would tell people is just open up any AI application and ask it, teach me how to use you. And the funniest thing will happen is it will actually give you examples of how to use you, right? And you could watch a YouTube video or anything on how to. But actually the funniest thing about it is the easiest way to learn is just by opening it up and typing in something, much like a Google search to say, how should I use you? And and and it will respond. And the funny thing is will be pretty good. And so the interesting thing about AI versus kind of prior technologies think about like computer programing or, or, you know, learning a foreign language or something like that. The barriers to entry for those were so high in terms of adoption. The barriers to entry are essentially just the ability to type. And, you know, having verbal and literary and literal, um, you know, fluency to do these types of things. And so I think that, you know, AI is a funny thing is it’s going to teach you how to use it.

Trisha Stetzel: [00:10:49] I love that like this. This weight has been lifted off of my shoulders, and I’m sure other people are like, oh, well, I never I never thought about that. And if you’re using a tool that doesn’t have a chat in it, there’s so many of them do now they’re integrated. Then go ask your chat tool how to use the new calendar AI tool, or some you know thing that you’ve now decided to play with. I love that! What fantastic advice. So you’ve talked about um, or I’ve seen you write about micro AI versus macro AI. Um, what’s a practical roadmap leaders can follow without chasing shiny objects?

Cole Napper: [00:11:28] So this is such an interesting point. And the point I made a second ago was what I would call micro AI. And what that means is many, um, you know, most organizations are their leaders are saying we want to encourage AI adoption, right? Right now, at least if you’re a big organization, white collar workers, you’re a lot of people are getting these messages, hey, go and build AI capability and skills. And then they ask the reasonable next question is what does that mean? Right. And so what? The simple version of what I’ve been calling micro AI is just going in and learning how to use these tools yourself as a human being or as a team or even as a function. And it’s just saying, this is local to me. I’m going to build my own capabilities and that’s great, and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, there’s this kind of counter narrative, which is many executives, when they’re talking about making investments in AI, they’re not talking about micro AI. What they’re talking about is what I call macro AI, which is the ability to bring AI in to understand a business process or build an entirely new technology, or a new operating model or a new workflow end to end with AI at the center of it.

Cole Napper: [00:12:42] And that takes a completely different skill set. It takes coordination amongst many human beings, and it’s not the same as just using a chatbot. And and so the confusion I see lies in, you know, managers when they’re talking to their teams, they’re saying, hey, let’s all go get Upskilled on ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever, the tool of choice that their organization is. And executives are saying, yeah, but that’s not what we meant. We meant that we wanted you to make the we’re making $1 billion investment as a company into AI to tackle problem XYZ for our organization, and we’re going to completely, fundamentally transform our work. And so one of the things that I’ve been talking about lately is AI workforce transformation is going to be one of the hottest business initiatives in 2026. And if organizations are wanting to understand that companies like, like CAF can help. And so in the book that I wrote is going to be kind of what I would say, a primer to understanding how this is going to impact your workforce over time. I think this is going to be one of the hottest issues over the next year or two.

Trisha Stetzel: [00:13:45] Yeah, fantastic. All right. Tell us the name of your book again, Cole.

Cole Napper: [00:13:49] Well, the short version is just people analytics. The long version is people, people analytics using generative AI. And, um, and oh, I should know this. Uh, let me look at it. Uh, if you edit this out using data driven HR generative AI as a business asset. Sorry, I got my tongue tied for a second.

Trisha Stetzel: [00:14:06] No, no, no. That’s good. So where can folks find that book?

Cole Napper: [00:14:09] Anywhere. Books are sold. Uh, I think Barnes and Noble even has them in physical locations as well. But if you anywhere online, you can find it.

Trisha Stetzel: [00:14:16] Okay. Fantastic. You guys, uh, if you go online looking for the author, it’s Cole Napper c o l e n e r so you can find that book. Cole, I know that people are already ready to connect with you. Want to have a conversation, see what you’re up to. How can they connect with you best?

Cole Napper: [00:14:34] Yeah. The best way to get in touch with me is Cole dapper com as Trisha just spelled it a second ago. Um, you can find me on LinkedIn. And if you’re interested in any of the work that we’re doing at Light Cast, you can also look at like our website as well.

Trisha Stetzel: [00:14:49] Fantastic. Uh, you guys know I’ll put that in the show notes. So if you’re sitting in front of your computer, you can just point and click and get in touch with Cole right away. Um, I’d like to jump into, because you’ve been talking a lot about a lot of things, uh, in this labor space. Um, how what for those people who are listening, Cole, what’s something practical where they can start to use the types of systems that you’re talking about to hire the right people and get the right people on the right team doing the right things?

Cole Napper: [00:15:26] The thing I would say, going back to the fault lines here for a second, is I would go back and I said, you know, the like geopolitics, AI disruption, labor shortages. Not every organization is experiencing all of them, but every organization is experiencing at least one of them. And so the first thing I would say is which of these are you experiencing? And then I would say that’s going to lead you to the resources that organizations like lighthouse can provide. We have so many materials about helping organizations with labor shortages. We’ve been talking about this for years, even before, you know, this was this is becoming a hot topic right now. But we were talking about it showing that this was going to become a hot topic because we are always very forward looking organization. We’ve been doing research into AI ever since generative AI came out in 2022, so we have a lot of resources around that and how that’s going to impact, again, that AI workforce transformation I was talking about earlier. Geopolitics, frankly, is a newer one for us, and I think it’s newer kind of for the globe, frankly. But we have um, the, the a research report coming out in February called Fault Lines. That’s going to go it’s going to be hundreds of pages long.

Cole Napper: [00:16:35] It’s going to dig into these things. And we already have many, many resources internally for organizations that we already work with that are experiencing geopolitical kind of conflicts. So imagine just for a second, if you’re an organization. And again, I use data centers as an example. Earlier you’re thinking about, well, I’m considering these ten cities about putting a data center. What variables should I look at to see if they have the available workforce in these ten cities, like Cass has you covered? Or if you’re an international organization, you’re saying, you know, we have invested heavily in manufacturing in country A, B, C, and that country is not getting along with the United States anymore. And we’re thinking about moving it to countries, you know, C, D, and F and well guess what? Like Cass has data on all of those countries and can and can guide you and say, here’s what you would need to make the right investment into the right part of the world, or where to restore it in the United States as well. And so we’re doing that work constantly. And so depending on the type of organization you have, we can help in all of those circumstances.

Trisha Stetzel: [00:17:39] Fantastic. That’s very interesting. I know you’re doing some community work as well, which is why you have the some of these opportunities to talk to people. One uh, one area is your podcast directionally correct? Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Cole Napper: [00:17:53] Yeah, so I started my podcast, uh, back in 2021. So it’s about four years old. Um, it’s focused primarily for, uh, the geeks of the world that are very interested in these subjects. So not as broad an audience as yours, Trisha, but I’m really I talk to the leading experts in the world, in the field of the things that I’ve been talking about from multinational companies, higher education, uh, leaders in the government who are doing this type of work. And they get to talk about exactly what that means in practical, real world terms and help guide folks in the future. And I referenced many of those episodes in the book as well. So it’s been a great resource to give me real world use cases about how this applies outside of my own career, where I have a lot of really good examples as well. Um, but and then I also write a lot of really provocative articles in my Substack newsletter that’s under the same name. And again, we get to use those as fodder to talk about in the podcast as well. Uh, I like to say it’s edutainment, meaning we like to crack a lot of jokes. We have a lot of fun, but it’s also very educational if you’re interested in that field. And I think that’s why it’s kind of separated itself from the pack in terms of other folks that are talking about this space.

Trisha Stetzel: [00:19:07] Nice. Uh, so you guys, if you’re interested, that’s directionally correct. Um, I think I know that you’re running some people analytics meetups. Um, tell me more about that.

Cole Napper: [00:19:23] Yeah. In terms of giving back one of the organizations, actually two organizations, the Society of Industrial Organizational Psychologist, which is called Psyop, and the Society of People Analytics called Spa. Uh, for both of those! I’ve been involved in the community function, so I actually lead the community committee for SCA. Um, and that helps with meetups not just around the United States, but around the globe. Uh, I actually started the People Analytics meetup in Dallas Fort Worth in 2018, so it’s been going about for about eight years. I’ve helped Chicago, I’ve helped Denver, I’ve helped Nashville, I’ve helped Atlanta, I’ve helped Houston even actually, uh, which is funny enough. Uh, and so I know the leaders down in that meetup as well. And so if you’re ever interested in getting involved in those, if you’re in that space, uh, feel free to reach out to me and I can get you connected with the right people locally.

Trisha Stetzel: [00:20:10] Yeah. Fantastic. I love that. I love everyone who gives back. I mean, if we’re going to go out into the world and have a business and ask people to engage us, then we should be giving back to that same community. And thank you for doing that. Uh, and such interesting work that you’re doing. So something’s bubbling, bubbling up for me when it comes to AI and labor. And the question here is how do you balance personalization, privacy, and even bias mitigation when you’re deploying AI across talent decisions? Humans? Yeah.

Cole Napper: [00:20:44] Well, I think that, uh, I even and I talk about this to a great extent in my book, um, there’s a famous slide from an IBM slide deck in 1970. Talk not talking about AI was just talking about the introduction of computers. And it said computers can’t make decisions because computers can’t be held accountable. Right. And so fundamentally, my belief stays within that vein, which is we should be helping AI to make help humans make decisions better. But we should not be allowing AI to make decisions without humans in the loop. And I think that is a key distinction. So some organizations are trying to affect change by putting AI to kind of automate decisions. I think that that is a bad idea. I think that’s going to be hard to legally defend. Idea in the future as those lawsuits start to come up. But I think AI is probably the best resource that’s ever been created about giving people broad access to information across the spectrum to make decisions themselves. And again, it has problems around hallucinations. If you ask it a question, it doesn’t know the answer. It doesn’t say, I don’t know. It bluffs you. And it says, here’s the answer, even if it’s made up. Right now those are problems. And so I would always check secondary sources. If you’re trying to make a key decision, making sure that the data it’s providing you is correct. And frankly, it cites sources like like CAS sometimes. And sometimes they’re actually right and sometimes they’re made up. And so, you know, go to the core source of data if you’re looking to do these types of things. All that said, I’m very, very pro AI. I’m very think it’s going to be a positive force in the world. But ultimately human beings need to stay. Key decision makers as we move forward.

Trisha Stetzel: [00:22:33] Yeah, I love that. And you said something that really resonates with me that I’ve heard before, which is human in the loop. So when I say that or when you say that, how does that apply to. And I know you talked a little bit about it just now, but how does human in the loop apply to the business owners that are listening today that are implementing AI solutions?

Cole Napper: [00:22:56] Well, I mean, I think a key example from the HR human capital space is hiring. Should an AI hire someone without a human in the loop? Or fundamentally, should a hiring manager always be the person who fundamentally makes the decision on whether someone is hired? Ai could be used to understand the candidate better, to parse their resumes to. You know, some organizations even do things like video interviewing and those types of things, and AI can help supplement that in terms of saying, you know, this might be a good candidate. This this one, you know, wasn’t as good. But fundamentally, that decision should always reside with the hiring manager. And that’s going to be the most legally defensible decision at this moment.

Trisha Stetzel: [00:23:42] Yeah, I love that. Thank you for taking us a little deeper in that. So I want to jump back over to like, Cass, tell me the types of clients that you’re working for. So if people are listening and they’re like, oh, this sounds really interesting. Tell me about the types of clients that you’re working with.

Cole Napper: [00:23:57] Yeah, I mean, we work with the largest institutions in the world. So 67 of the fortune 100 companies are our customers. If you’re in the public sector, we’re working with the Federal Reserve, the world Bank, the International Monetary Forum, like all of these major multinational institutions and higher education, we’re working with most of the leading higher education institutions in the country, as well as thousands of community colleges as well. So any kind of form of higher education, even online learning institutions as well. And so any of these organizations, these are who we’re working with. We work with the, the the state of Texas, the Texas Workforce Commission, I believe we I think we work with the city of Houston. I’d have to double check that, but we work with many cities around the state as well. And so we are deeply embedded in the community. In addition to working with many global organizations.

Trisha Stetzel: [00:24:52] I love that. All right. So as we get to the back end of our conversation, one last question, Nicole. If a leader wants to make one decision this quarter, let’s just call it first quarter. If they want to make one decision in first quarter that materially improves talent outcomes and business performance, what should it be and how will they know that it actually worked?

Cole Napper: [00:25:17] I ask me the hard questions. Well, I would say my cop out answer is it’s going to depend on the type of business that you run. But let’s say for the sake of argument, that this is a business that has a key thing, like AI disruption going on right now. I would say you should be understanding the work, your workers and the types of work that is getting done early in this year and making those investments. And I would frankly say you should probably start out by piloting some of those investments so that you don’t overcommit, and then it doesn’t end up working out. But once you’ve done the pilot, you you darn well better be measuring the results to see if it’s having the intended impact. And then if it is, you should roll it out more broadly. And so I would think that would be a really key result that many organizations are going to be facing in early 2026.

Trisha Stetzel: [00:26:07] Yeah. Fantastic. Cole, thank you so much for being with me today. This has been a fantastic conversation.

Cole Napper: [00:26:14] Yeah. Thanks so much for having me, Trisha.

Trisha Stetzel: [00:26:16] All right, you guys Cole napper. He is the host of directionally Correct and also the author of People Analytics using Data driven HR and generative AI as business as a business asset. Cole, I appreciate your time today. And, um, can’t wait to have another conversation with you because I’m really interested in all of the things that you said today. I want to dig deeper.

Cole Napper: [00:26:40] I want to come back for a part two at some point.

Trisha Stetzel: [00:26:43] Yeah, I would love that. All right, you guys, that’s all the time we have for today. If you found value in this conversation that I had with Cole, please share it with a fellow entrepreneur, veteran or Houston business leader ready to grow. Be sure to follow, rate, and review the show. It helps us reach more bold business minds just like yours and your business. Your leadership and your legacy are built one intentional step at a time. So stay inspired, stay focused, and keep building the business and the life you deserve.