We don’t always realize it, but what we do and how we do it are themselves pitches. We’re conveying a message about ourselves, our work, or our organization—and other people are interpreting it.

Take some time to find out what they think you’re saying. Recruit ten people—a combination of coworkers and friends and family. Then ask them which three words come to mind in response to one of these questions: What is my company about? What is my product or service about? What am I about? Make it clear that you’re not asking them for physical qualities (“tall, dark, and handsome”) but something deeper.

Once you gather these words, look for patterns. Many people are surprised by the disconnect between what they think they’re conveying and what others are actually hearing. Knowing is the prelude to improving.

1. Close the Gap

When a company identifies a gap between its people and the jobs they're doing, it essentially has two choices: reduce operational complexity or increase employee sophistication. Said differently, change the people or change the job. On the people side, the two levers you have are selection and training. Selection might work in a high-turnover business, but it's usually a daunting solution for any other organization…

The goal is to get a closer match between employee sophistication and operational complexity. Go as far as you can on the people front, and then address system complexity. You can address complexity either by decreasing it outright or by decreasing the amount of complexity experienced by each employee. For the latter, it may be possible to more thoughtfully break up who does what — break down a Job into smaller tasks and assign them to specialized employees. Take inspiration from a hospital: one person takes blood pressure, another does anesthesia, and another performs the surgery. The system itself is complicated, but each employee only experiences a portion of it.

First, not all of your employees are superheroes. Most companies have a continuum on the payroll, from the exceptionally talented to the should-definitely-be-doing-something-else- with-their-lives. This isn't easy to acknowledge. Any number of things can get in the way of doing so, from the role you played in hiring someone to good, old-fashioned conflict aversion. Here's a safe assumption: unless you have the resources and capacity to systematically attract, reward, and unleash the very best in your industry, some of the people now reporting to you cannot be objectively characterized as outstanding. Second, you're probably making your employees' job harder. The hunt for new sources of revenue within organizations often leads to an increase in operational complexity. New products and services — or even new variations on old ones — lead to new processes, policies, and regulations; new organizational structures and technologies; new customers with new needs being channeled toward new touch points. In one quick-service restaurant we studied, the menu had grown from twenty-five items to more than a hundred in just a few years.

Sound at all familiar? If so, we advise companies to first try to get a sense of the size of the employee-job gap. We suggest two diagnostic steps that will produce some intuition about the magnitude of the problem. If you have a few days to study the question, start with the approach described below. If you only have a few minutes, skip to the second step.

1. Close the Gap

When a company identifies a gap between its people and the jobs they're doing, it essentially has two choices: reduce operational complexity or increase employee sophistication. Said differently, change the people or change the job. On the people side, the two levers you have are selection and training. Selection might work in a high-turnover business, but it's usually a daunting solution for any other organization…

The goal is to get a closer match between employee sophistication and operational complexity. Go as far as you can on the people front, and then address system complexity. You can address complexity either by decreasing it outright or by decreasing the amount of complexity experienced by each employee. For the latter, it may be possible to more thoughtfully break up who does what — break down a Job into smaller tasks and assign them to specialized employees. Take inspiration from a hospital: one person takes blood pressure, another does anesthesia, and another performs the surgery. The system itself is complicated, but each employee only experiences a portion of it.