Patricia Kong
Patricia Kong is Product Owner of Enterprise Agility and Head of Learning at Scrum.org. She helps organizations thrive in a complex world by focusing on enterprise innovation, leadership and teams. She is a people advocate and fascinated by organizational behavior and misbehaviors. She emerged through the financial services industry and has led product development, product management and marketing for several early stage companies in the US and Europe.
She is a co-author of three books: Facilitating Professional Scrum Teams, Unlocking Business Agility with Evidence-Based Management, and The Nexus Framework for Scaling Scrum. She is also an author and steward of the Evidence-Based Management Guide and Nexus Guide for Scaling Scrum. Patricia lived in France and now resides in her hometown of Boston.
Keynote—Ethical Leadership in a Data-driven World
In today’s fast-moving world, data is everywhere, but ethical leadership is what determines whether that data helps us thrive or causes unintentional harm. Agile leaders have been turning to data-driven and evidence-based ways to make faster, smarter, and outcome-oriented decisions in their organizations. But when dashboards, productivity trackers, and metrics substitute team autonomy, even good intentions erode successful teams and positive team culture.
In this talk, we’ll explore what it means to lead ethically in a data-driven and/or evidence-based agile organization. You’ll learn how to apply the principles of Evidence-Based Management not just to optimize value delivery, but to build systems of transparency, autonomy, curiosity, and accountability without surveillance or fear.
We will examine:
1. The difference between measuring for insight versus for control
2. How to avoid the trap of vanity metrics and misuse of psychological safety indicators
3. How ethical leaders can use data to amplify team voice, improve outcomes, and support a sustainable working pace
This session will help you shift from using data to manage toward using data to lead.