Your company’s mission is only as good as your execution, and being flexible to changes over the years is critical to executing successfully. This lesson was something that the team at Toms learned over the years, the Los Angeles-based company’s chief strategy and impact officer, Amy Smith, said at Inc.’s virtual Purpose Power Summit this week.
In 2006, Blake Mycoskie founded the buy-one-give-one pioneer Toms with a mission of making shopping for shoes a charitable action. The model–for every pair of shoes purchased, another is donated to a person in need–became popular, and other mission-driven brands followed suit. However, the company retired this famous program in 2019 to instead donate a third of company profits to different charities and partners with the goal of making a larger impact.