The G.I. Joe School of Negotiation

Have you ever heard of Don Levine? Probably not. But you've definitely heard of his most famous creation—G.I. Joe. I met Don a few years ago, when he was a guest on my radio program. We've been friends ever since. So when I thought about negotiation, I thought about Don Levine. He has spent his life negotiating—selling his ideas to retailers, manufacturers, and licensers of his products. But his greatest negotiation took place when he first came up with the notion of a doll for boys:

"In 1963, Barbie was the hottest selling toy around," says Levine. "Everyone in the industry was looking for the 'next big idea.' It suddenly came to me that girls had their Barbies to emulate and look up to, but boys had no equivalent. So I came up with the concept of G.I. Joe. But my boss wasn't too keen on the idea. He kept saying, 'Boys don't play with dolls.' My answer was, 'This isn't a doll, it's an action figure.' I just made up the term.

"We went back and forth for months. Finally my boss, who was also my mentor, said, 'I''ll tell you what. I'll invite some of the biggest buyers in the toy industry to listen to your idea. If they think you're wrong, promise me you'll be a big boy and stop driving me crazy with this idea!'

"The men came in, and they all loved the G.I. Joe concept. I said to my boss, 'Okay. Now you be a big boy and let's go ahead with this.'

"Thirty-five years later, more than a billion G.I. Joes have been sold. And young men all over the world still come up to me and say, 'I didn't have much when I was growing up, but I had my G.I. Joe. Thank you for giving me so many hours of fun.' It also gave many of them the surrogate father, big brother, or hero they were looking for. Being a part of the G.I. Joe phenomenon is an amazing feeling. And the genesis of it was two men who had to negotiate to make sure each felt secure in what the other was doing.

"Most of us think of negotiating as sitting at a table with your 'opponent' and being a tough business person. But it isn't about that. It's not as tough a word as we think it is. It's not a win-lose situation. It's about compromise. We negotiate every day in order to get by in the world. The greatest negotiation of all is, in fact, life."

It is better to be defeated on principles than to win on lies.

—Arthur Colwell,
writer