Ankna Kaul

About Ankna

Two decades at the intersection of leadership and service

Ankna Kaul has spent two decades working across leadership, service excellence, organisational culture and people excellence. Her career has taken her from luxury hospitality to consulting, leadership development, academia and one of India's leading business conglomerates, providing her with the opportunity to work with leaders, teams and future talent across diverse industries and organisational contexts.

She began her career with The Indian Hotels Company Limited (Taj Hotels) and later Hyatt Hotels, where she learnt that service excellence is not created through processes alone. It is shaped by leadership, culture and the everyday experiences people have at work. Those early years laid the foundation for her interest in understanding how organisations create environments where both people and performance can thrive.

As her career evolved, Ankna's work expanded from consulting into enterprise-wide talent and leadership initiatives at the Tata Group. Through consulting, she partnered with organisations on leadership development, organisational culture and people-focused initiatives across industries. At the Tata Group, she managed flagship learning and talent programmes, working closely with business leaders, academic institutions and partner organisations to create meaningful development experiences for emerging talent and future leaders. Alongside her corporate career, she has taught and spoken at universities and professional institutions, contributing to conversations on leadership, service excellence and the future of work.

Working across these different environments gave Ankna a broad perspective on how organisations approach leadership. While industries, cultures and business priorities differed, many of the leadership challenges remained remarkably similar. Organisations were investing in leadership development, employee experience, wellbeing, culture and performance, yet these conversations often existed independently of one another, even though employees experienced them as part of the same organisation.

These observations led to the development of PEARL™, a leadership architecture that brings together the different elements influencing how leadership is experienced across an organisation. They also became the foundation of her first book, Creating [Better] Leaders: A Shift Every Organisation Needs with P.E.A.R.L.

Today, Ankna continues to write, speak and contribute to conversations that help organisations create workplaces where leadership, service excellence and people experience reinforce one another to produce meaningful and sustainable outcomes.

The Observation

One Leadership Experience, Many Separate Conversations

People experience leadership as a whole, rather than as separate organisational initiatives.

Across different organisations, industries and leadership contexts, Ankna observed a recurring pattern. Leadership development, employee experience, wellbeing, organisational culture, service excellence and business performance were often discussed as separate priorities, led by different functions and measured in different ways.

Each of these conversations was important. Collectively, they reflected an organisation's ambition to build stronger leaders and better workplaces. Yet they were rarely viewed as part of the same leadership experience.

For employees, these distinctions did not exist. Their experience of an organisation was shaped by the quality of leadership they encountered every day, how decisions were made, how culture was lived, how people were supported and how success was recognised.

Could leadership be viewed through a more connected lens, one that recognised the relationship between purpose, people, culture, performance and service, rather than treating them as separate initiatives?

That question became the starting point for PEARL™.

The Framework

PEARL™

A leadership architecture that brings together the conversations organisations often treat separately.

The pattern Ankna kept observing — important priorities, approached independently, measured differently, and rarely connected — became the starting point for PEARL™. For employees, however, these distinctions rarely existed. Their experience of an organisation was shaped by how these elements came together through leadership. The way leaders communicated, made decisions, recognised contribution, responded to challenges and created opportunities for people influenced how culture was experienced every day.

PEARL™ was developed to bring these conversations together within a single leadership architecture. Rather than introducing another leadership model, it provides a practical way of understanding how purpose, people, culture, performance and service influence one another, and how they collectively shape the experience of leadership across an organisation.

PEARL is a People Excellence Architecture for Remarkable Leadership. Each letter represents an essential dimension of leadership, but the framework is designed to be understood as an integrated architecture rather than a sequence of individual competencies.

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Purpose & Philosophy

Providing clarity of purpose and a shared philosophy that guides leadership decisions and organisational direction.

Employee Experience & Wellbeing

Creating environments where people feel supported, valued and able to contribute at their best.

Alignment to Culture

Ensuring that leadership behaviours consistently reflect the culture an organisation seeks to build.

Results Through Meaningful Measures

Recognising that sustainable organisational performance depends on both business outcomes and people outcomes.

Leadership for Service Excellence

Embedding service as a leadership mindset that shapes how organisations engage with employees, customers and communities.

"PEARL™ is not intended to replace existing leadership models or organisational practices. It is designed to help leaders connect them."

The Book

Creating [Better] Leaders

A Shift Every Organisation Needs with P.E.A.R.L.

Creating [Better] Leaders brings together two decades of experience across luxury hospitality, consulting, leadership development and one of India's largest business conglomerates. It reflects the same disconnect Ankna kept observing, and explores how organisations can create workplaces where leadership, culture, people and performance reinforce one another.

Written for leaders across industries, the book examines why many organisations continue to address purpose, employee experience, wellbeing, organisational culture and performance as separate priorities, even though employees experience them as part of the same organisation. Through the PEARL™ framework, it offers an integrated perspective on leadership that is practical, reflective and applicable across sectors.

Rather than a sequence of individual competencies, Creating [Better] Leaders invites readers to consider leadership as the experience organisations create every day through the choices, behaviours and cultures they shape.

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Why This Book

Why this book?

After working across different industries, one thing became increasingly clear to me: people don't experience organisations the way organisations describe themselves. They don't separate culture from leadership, or wellbeing from performance. They experience all of it through the quality of leadership they encounter every day.

This book is my attempt to put that into words, an invitation to think differently about leadership through the PEARL™ framework.

— Ankna

In Their Words

Reflections from leaders and practitioners who have read Creating [Better] Leaders.

“PEARL offers more than a framework. It is an invitation for leaders to rediscover the quiet power of service, purpose, empathy, alignment, and culture. Like a pearl itself, remarkable leadership is built layer by layer through consistent actions and shared purpose.”

Dr. P. V. Ramana MurthyCorporate Leader & Author

“Creating [BETTER] Leaders is a thoughtful and timely exploration of leadership in an era where culture, trust, and purpose matter more than ever. Through the PEARL framework, Ankna offers a practical yet deeply human approach to leadership that connects people, performance, and service excellence. This book is a valuable guide for leaders seeking to build organisations where purpose is lived, not merely stated.”

Amit GoyalManaging Director India, Chanel

“Creating [BETTER] Leaders is a timely and urgent guide for modern executives. Ankna Kaul rightly argues that culture cannot simply be delegated to HR; it must be actively lived, measured, and transmitted through every leader and operational system in the business. The PEARL™ framework provides a brilliant roadmap to ensure our organizations retain their soul even as they build for immense scale.”

Arundhati BhattacharyaCEO & President, Salesforce South Asia

“In the current times where each of us is grappling with a world that seems to change at every turn Ankna Kaul reminds us that the most important thing leaders can hold on to is human connection. The PEARL™ framework offers leaders a practical method to embed purpose and service into the everyday experience of work. The book underlines that people and performance can only thrive when leaders nurture a culture of trust, belonging and service.”

Prof. Neharika VohraFaculty, IIM Ahmedabad

“I have known Ankna since the very beginning of her professional journey. What has always stood out to me is her ability to connect deeply with people, her strong service mindset and her determination to keep learning and evolving. The PEARL framework is a reflection of that journey and the wisdom she has gathered along the way.”

Ajit DiasCHRO, BLS International

“I have known Ankna from around 2006 when I joined the Taj. What has consistently stood out is her commitment to service, her ability to build meaningful relationships and her genuine passion for developing people. The PEARL framework is a natural culmination of those experiences and reflects her thoughtful approach to leadership and organisational excellence.”

Shyam KaikiniPresident, Hospitality & Property Management, Lodha Group

“Ankna Kaul is among the few with the observational acuity, intellectual discipline, and lived experience to translate aspiration and intent into scalable architecture. Her unique PEARL architecture is a natural extension of her decades of experience across leadership development, hospitality, and consulting, grounded by close contact with operations, customers, and frontline realities.”

Kate NgIndependent Facilitator & Leadership Coach