Greatvine is the result of years of research, delivering you the most simple & powerful intervention to save your organisation thousands of dollars & hours, and create a work environment where your people thrive.





Your people are your greatest asset.

Unlock their potential with leaders they want to work with.



Throughout our career, we (and you) might have noticed a quiet truth about teamwork.

The difference between a great and a bad team is not individual performance: it's engagement.

Individuals gifting you their discretionary genius. Teams coming together to deliver more than the sum of their parts.

That's when the magic happens, and great results flow from there!



This seemed important, but just how important was this compared to many other organisational priorities?

It sounds crazy but a long-term study of 200 companies, led by Harvard professors, found this shocking result:

Positive Culture

in companies resulted over 10 years in a

net revenue boost



This explains many team's focus on culture, from teambuilding events to culture surveys.

Our experience and research shows that all these efforts are missing the core driver of team culture:

Leaders' values shape their team's culture.





Greatvine helps you find leaders with values your team wants.





The Problem

A recruitment flaw is letting your teams down



We have been on the recruiting and applying side of job search.

Recruiting people is hard. It's a high-volume, time-pressured search requiring judgement based on incomplete information.



Did you know:

• Recruiters spend 10 seconds per CV on average… but 78% of candidates lie on their resume?
• Recruiters spend 1 to 2 hours in interview with a candidate… but short interactions are where narcissists shine most?



Teams want honest, reliable, humble leaders who have their back… but those values are visible over years, not minutes.



Despite our best efforts, the system is advantaging leaders we want the least, resulting in sobbering data:

Senior leaders in organisations are

than people in the general population



If that wasn't enough, our cognitive biases trip us up every step of an interview. Research has shown we tend to prefer candidates:

• Tall. Seriously. Taller people are more likely to become leaders (hint: it has no actual correlation with capabilities).
• Good looking. Political election results can be forecasted just by getting people to look at candidates' headshots.
• Who look like us. If we look alike or have similar experiences, surely they're good?



We could go on but you get the idea. We are yet to meet someone who has not dealt with a toxic boss.

Years of organisational and psychology research show a consistent trend. Good leaders are an exception not the rule, because the system is flawed.



Still want to bet your team's next leader based on your intuition?

We cannot avoid biases, but Greatvine gathers years of people's impressions about your candidate to balance out your short-term intuition.





Can you imagine burning 50% of your data center?

Actually, you might be doing way worse...





The Impact

Retain talent, knowledge and relationships



We all heard it: “people leave managers, not companies”.

Not only does research validate this, but the hidden costs associated with people leaving can be staggering.



of people quit their job to get away from a bad manager

according to a Gallup study of 7,200 people



Surely, we should aim to retain our top talent?

We realised that if we can help businesses avoid hiring the kind of manager people run away from, they could save:





The wrong leader can destroy years of work in a matter of months.

Want to be left fixing their trail of destruction and a broken team?





The Solution

Scaling your social antivirus



We knew there was a problem, so looked for current solutions. There are many, but they have limitations:

• Psychometric tests are nice, but are time-consuming for candidates and could be gamed
• Leadership recruitment experts are effective, but cost time & money you may not have
• Reference checks are self-defeating, since the candidate picks their referees



Only one solution works quickly and effectively: word-of-mouth.

To get real insights, we naturally look for others' opinions about a person's character.

71% of US companies have an employee referral programs: this remains the best way to trust a candidates' values are aligned to what we want.

Gossip enables groups to identify those who are helpful or harmful to the greater good.

Dacher Keltner, UC Berkeley Professor of psychology



The only drawback of word-of-mouth? Its effectiveness is limited to candidates within your social network, and it can become a legal minefield.





Greatvine builds on humans' natural search for social validation

so you can close the information loop even when recruiting outside your network.



The science

Picking up the signals that matter



We wondered: can we scale the benefits of word-of-mouth for you to get insights on any candidate, legally?

And out of the million questions you may want to ask to get the low-down on a candidate, what are the most important?



It took us years, but we have built the perfect solution for you, based on robust science and with a touch of magic…

Greatvine delivers insights that help you find great leaders.



The data science

To get insights across networks, we built an algorithm that tracks down a candidate's former colleagues.

We mine data and cross-reference profiles globally to reach out to former managers, peers and subordinates.

We use this to increase your confidence level by eliciting answers across many years, role contexts and relationships.



The social science

To ask what matters most, we poured through social science research to pinpoint the makings of great leaders.

We focus questions on values former colleagues can easily identify, but are hard to pick up through other means.

We use this to compare your candidates' results to our benchmark of great & worst leaders, and get a sense of where they sit.



The legal science

To ensure this is "gossip for the greater good", we put safeguards that keep the whole process in safe waters.

We get consent from candidates, frame our questions to avoid defamation risks, and we protect respondents' anonymity.

We give you suggested interview questions for you to dig deeper into each aspect with your candidate and make your own hiring choices.





Greatvine does the hard work

to make your leader search easy.

Try Greatvine now





Greatvine Insights builds on the great work from leading academics in the fields of management, organisational behaviour, psychology.

In no particular order, here is a non-exhaustive list of thanks to the researchers that guided the creation of Greatvine Insights:

• Bob Sutton, Prof. of Management Science & Engineering at Stanford - highlighting the prevalence & impact of ‘assholes’ in organisations
• Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Prof. of Business Psychology at University College London - highlighting flaws in the recruitment of leaders
• Amy Edmonson, Prof. of Leadership at Harvard - highlighting the importance of psychological safety for teams to perform
• Dacher Keltner, Prof. of Psychology at UC Berkeley - highlighting the positive value of gossip to allocate power for the greater good
• Donella Meadows, Pew Scholar in Conservation and Environment and MacArthur Fellow - highlighting levers of intervention in systems
• Warren Bennis, Distinguished Prof. of Business Administration at the University of Southern California - highlighting the makings of leaders
• Jeffrey Pfeffer, Prof. of Organisational Behaviour at Stanford - highlighting the systemic advantages of negative traits in corporations
• Daniel Kahneman, Prof. Emeritus of Psychology at Princeton - highlighting the cognitive biases that can trick our intuition
• Jim Collins, research & consultant - highlighting the characteristics of 'Level 5' leaders



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