Leading Organizational Change: Robert Redford, Paul Newman, and Me

In 1980, Robert Redford was still a matinee idol.  Characteristically, he broke form.  He starred in a prison movie and not just a prison movie but a prison reform movie. The movie, Brubaker, drew on the story of Thomas O. Murton, a reform warden in Arkansas in the 1960s and a writer about his efforts.  A strong movie cast included Morgan Freeman, David Keith, Jane Alexander, and Yaphet Kotto.

In 1981, I started using the movie as a reasonably textured consideration of the process of organizational change and leading it.  Need.  Hope. Coalition building.  Resistance. Vested interests. Dedicated (and not so dedicated) leadership.  Loneliness in leading and in following. Inspired followership. Courageous, vulnerable followers. Struggles small and large.  The movie contained these elements of organizational change and more.

I wanted to know more about the backstory.  I bought Murton’s Accomplices to the Crime (with Joe Hyams, 1969).  I wanted to talk to Murton, but I couldn’t find him.  He had a story. He also seemed well-worth the meeting for other reasons.  He had reportedly long tried to get the story of and need for prison reform told.  His persistence led to Brubaker on which he served as an advisor.  Physically, no one would confuse him with Redford and yet-- to paraphrase Murton, ‘I tried to get this story told for years.  Now, I get to watch Robert Redford play me.’ I figured that I’d enjoy meeting a reformer with such self-deprecating humor.

Pondering how to reach Murton led me to think about contacting Redford who had apparently made the movie to tell the story because the cause mattered to him. I figured that Redford would know how to contact Murton. How to reach Redford in an effective way?

I didn’t know where Redford was or anyone who knew him. 

I did know that Paul Newman, another stellar and renowned actor, and Redford were good buddies (on and off the screen). Another non-starter?

Not quite.  Coming from Connecticut, I knew that Newman lived in Greenwich, CT.  I had no street address, but I figured that I didn’t need one.

I wrote a brief letter to Newman stating my intention and requesting his help in contacting Redford.  I sent the letter off on Wharton stationery.  Address: Mr. Paul Newman, Greenwich, CT.

About a week later, I received a note from Paul Newman’s executive assistant saying that Mr. Newman wanted me to have the phone number and address for Mr. Redford’s office in New York City.  Naturally, I wrote a thank you note.

Moving right along, I next wrote another letter on Wharton stationery, this one to Robert Redford.

Wharton’s Management Department secretarial staff had by now taken a keen interest in the proceedings as indicated by unprompted visits to my office for status reports and various hallway well wishes on my pursuit.

In about another week, a letter arrived from Redford’s executive assistant saying that Mr. Redford wanted me to have his last known contact information for Mr. Murton, phone and mailing address.

My thank you note included an invitation to Robert Redford should he ever wish to present Brubaker as an organizational change case to a Wharton MBA class.

Flushed with unexpected success, I turned my attention to Tom Murton.  I turned with great confidence that the hardest part was now completed. I could surely make contact with Murton.
Newman and Redford found.  Help garnered. I focused on next steps… And Murton? I never found him, considerable and repeated effort notwithstanding.

I’m not sure that even Aesop could extract a concise moral to this tale. There’s a lesson here somewhere about networking vagaries, the power of common cause, generosity from strangers. persistence, dead ends, the impact of Wharton stationery…maybe even the mysteries of life.

Regardless, to my mind anyway, it’s a good story—if a bit of the shaggy dog variety.

Hope you enjoyed it.

Oh, and the movie, “Brubaker” still merits viewing…as a decent movie about an important topic and as a more than decent  account of the dynamics of organizational change and its leadership.
 
(Consider joining me for the next offering of Wharton’s Leading Organizational Change executive education course, February 2-5, 2026)

Also, for a 70% discount through 10/1/25 of the audio book version of the revised version of my book with Cassie Solomon, Leading Successful Change: 8 Keys to Making Change Work…