Gene Flow Decision Tree

Too little flow = groupthink. Too much = culture soup. Population genetics predicts it precisely: "one migrant per generation" prevents populations from diverging due to genetic drift. But too much migration swamps local adaptation entirely. The math is called migration-selection balance.

Isolated companies stagnate—without external talent input, groupthink accumulates and adaptive variation disappears. Excessive hiring swamps culture—values evolved for specific contexts get diluted by norms suited for different environments. Facebook's "move fast and break things" culture worked when teams were small. After the 2012 IPO and aggressive scaling, maintaining coherent values became the company's central organizational challenge. Amazon navigated this differently—hiring externally for 40%+ of senior roles while using Leadership Principles as cultural selection pressure to maintain coherence.

This decision tree applies migration-selection balance to organizational talent flow. Five symptom pathways: Stagnation (feeling insular, <10% external leadership hires) routes to increasing gene flow through external recruiting and cross-industry partnerships. Culture Dilution (>20% annual new hires for 2+ years) routes to slowing hiring pace and strengthening onboarding. Post-Acquisition Exodus (>40% process replacement in first year) indicates gene flow shock—reduce integration velocity. Hiring Challenges (>30% growth rate, can't find culture fits) suggests scaling too fast for absorption capacity. Departmental Culture Conflicts (engineering vs. sales vs. operations) indicate segmentation requiring intentional cross-functional rotation.

Each pathway has quantitative thresholds: meet the threshold, implement directional fix; miss the threshold, investigate execution, strategy, or leadership. What's the right hiring rate for your culture? For the full Gene Flow Governance Framework with intervention playbooks and calibration guidance, see the Adaptation & Evolution section.