How Juliana Nunes is putting the problem before the agent

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3 mins

Industry

Healthcare · Pharmaceuticals · Medical devices

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Meet Jasmine Jaco, VP, Organization Transformation & HR Strategy at Boston Scientific

Jasmine spent most of her career in management consulting, leading large-scale global transformations anchored in business strategy and value delivery. Along the way she launched startups and built an experience innovation practice.

At Boston Scientific she leads AI organization transformation, covering work and role redesign, and is building the HR capabilities needed to lead that change across the business.

 

The initial estimate looked promising: AI agents could free up around four hours a week for each sales representative. Then Boston Scientific’s team sat down with the people actually doing the work.


Customer preparation involved information the proposed agent hadn’t accounted for. Some of the administrative work included in the savings calculation wasn’t happening consistently in the first place. For Jasmine, the experience showed why understanding work matters before making promises about what AI will improve.

Getting close enough to understand the work

One early lesson was about scope. Trying to address the entire enterprise at once would stretch limited expertise too thin. A meaningful area of work offered somewhere to learn, refine the approach and demonstrate what redesign could accomplish.

Sales provided a revealing example. The team examined preparing for customer calls, conducting them and documenting interactions in the CRM. But job descriptions and high-level conversations could only take them so far. They described broad responsibilities without revealing the information, systems and individual practices involved.

Letting employees test the assumptions

Working with Reejig, Boston Scientific looked beyond job descriptions to how work actually happened. Breaking the work into tasks and subtasks, alongside the people doing it every day, changed the picture.

Sales reps prepared for calls using information scattered across different places, including their own phones, so the initial agent couldn’t give them everything they needed. Many reps also weren’t consistently recording meetings in the CRM. The estimate had counted savings against work that, in some cases, wasn’t being done, and requiring that documentation could actually add time.

Employees’ knowledge exposed gaps in both the workflow and its business case. The progress was a clearer understanding of what needed to change and which assumptions could withstand scrutiny.

Making room for judgment in the redesigned workflow

Jasmine is also helping teams account for the work AI creates: reviewing outputs, applying judgment, correcting problems and remaining accountable for the result. Under pressure to show productivity gains, those steps are easy to compress or skip.

People also need experience to recognize when an output is wrong, so decisions about what to automate need to consider how employees build that expertise. Research and presentations can generate interest, but practical examples make work design tangible.



Proof points create belief.


 

 

The transformation story

How Johnson & Johnson makes employee feedback part of how HR technology improves

Agent requests needed a clearer problem

Requests for agents arrived before teams could explain the problem. Adding technology to a complicated process could raise costs without improving the work.

Understand the work before choosing AI

An AI blueprint starts with the problem and examines the work first, with Reejig helping the team see how work happens and where complexity can be removed.

“Just putting AI on top of a crappy process isn’t going to bring you anywhere.”
Give employee feedback a dedicated role

A customer success role inside HR brings employees’ experience across products back to the teams building them.

“Product teams remain responsible for adoption.”
Start with the needs that matter most

A hiring solution stalled over 84 requirements. A team that started with three essentials moved faster and reported positive results.

What’s next: help more people build

Juliana wants improvement built into permanent roles and more HR colleagues able to build solutions, starting from a community of over 200 citizen developers.

What other leaders can take from this

Lessons for leaders

01
Diagnose before you automate
Ask what problem you are solving before deciding it needs an agent.
02
Make experience someone’s job
A dedicated role keeps employee feedback flowing into product decisions.
03
Design time for judgment
Three requirements that move beat 84 that stall.

Behind the transformation

How Juliana worked with Reejig to understand how work happens today before choosing where AI fits.

[We needed to] really understand how the work happens today… that’s the partnership we have with you, Siobhan…

Juliana Nunes Johnson & Johnson
Learn how leaders like Juliana use Reejig to understand work, prove value and scale AI work design. Book a demo →