Circle Back: Notes From Years In Organizations

Dialing 9 for an outside line. Thermal paper from the fax machine. Company cars and executive floors. Mission statements that survived reorganizations. The arrival of email, Zoom, psychological safety, and 'circle back.' In hundreds of brief recollections spanning more than four decades, Maria Glymph remembers a working life through its objects, language, rituals, absurdities, difficult encounters, and occasional grace. Inspired by Joe Brainard's I Remember, Circle Back is neither a conventional memoir nor a management book. It is a personal record of life inside organizations—and a quiet portrait of how work changed, how people behaved, and how much remained remarkably familiar. Anyone who has ever sat through a meeting, navigated a reorganization, learned the latest management language, or wondered what was really happening in the room will recognize something here.