Borders and Balance

A newsletter by Marcus Bearden, Partner, EMEA | AI Strategy and Transformation Lead, Gartner Consulting, London

Newsletter

Join the waitlist

A newsletter on AI and leadership. Coming soon.

The tools were never the hard part. I write about AI, leadership and where the two meet: the decisions, the people and the pace that decide whether anything actually changes. I write from advising CIOs across EMEA, building AI agents myself, and mentoring founders and colleagues.

Borders: the lines you work across. Countries and regulators, vendors and their roadmaps, teams and functions, and the line between what people decide and what machines now do.

Balance: the tensions that never resolve, only get managed. Speed and control, adoption and value, conviction and openness, comfort and growth, and ambition at a pace you can sustain.

Three pillars

AI that ships
Governance that lets work move, who controls the stack, what AI really costs, and notes from building agents myself.
Leading people
Hiring for what people can do rather than what their last employer let them do, judgement when AI makes polish cheap, hard conversations, and becoming a better leader, mentor and coach.
A pace you can sustain
Growth over comfort, careers that cross borders, and the life around the work.

Every issue ends with one question to take to your team.

You’ll get an email when the first issue goes out, and nothing else. No spam.