This is a potential warning sign.  Silos and turf wars can prevent collaboration. Collaboration is a mutually beneficial and well-defined relationship entered into by two or more people to achieve common goals. Informal relationships throughout organizations provide rapid access to trusted insights and information to support effective collaboration.

This is a common issue with organizations.  People are less willing to collaborate if they are not adequately resourced and are not allowed to reduce their workload to accommodate the added responsibilities of collaboration.

This is unfortunately very common. Many cultures promote individual success and advancement at the expense of collaborative efforts, and this often results in personal agendas that conflict with collaborative missions and purposes.

This could be holding your organization back. Collaboration depends on open and honest communication.  Collaboration will not be effective if people feel insecure or unwilling to speak candidly out of fear or feeling disrespected.

It sounds like your organization does not have a collaboration toolkit that is widely trained and used by your employees.  The good news is that collaboration techniques can easily be trained and practiced to mastery by your employees.

Collaboration is frustrating, slow, and often ineffective unless each participant understands and accepts their role and responsibilities as collaborator.  Three roles are essential to effective collaboration.  An organizational arbiter, who is a collaborator and who has the organization’s and the group’s authorization to make a fall-back decision if the group cannot reach a consensus.  A facilitator (often an outsider) trained in the collaboration process and does not contribute to the content of the discussions, and a recorder (often an outsider) skilled at capturing the group’s thinking in real-time as an ongoing narrative history of the group’s dialog.

Organizational hierarchy can impede effective collaboration. Organizations that value the inclusion of valuable insights and worldviews from all organizational levels tend to collaborate more effectively.  This is important for increasing the receptivity of the group’s decision by the rest of the organization, which will likely feel included by their representatives in the group.  This can both speed up and increase the effectiveness of the employees’ adoption of the changes recommended by the collaborators.

Trust is perhaps the most precious and fragile organizational value.  Collaboration is unlikely to be effective in cultures where trust is not valued.  Internal competition and self-serving behaviors violate trust and prevent collaboration. People freely collaborate in a trusting environment.

Unfortunately, your organization is not alone.  People are likely struggling to collaborate because they do not know how to do so. Research from 2022 conducted by Deb Mashek, Ph.D., and Dev Crasta, Ph.D., found that while U.S. workers spend an average of 3.2 hours weekly collaborating, over 50% of those people reported having received an hour or less of collaboration training.  Nearly one-third of those people had had no formal collaboration training.

Collaboration can seem frustrating and slow, especially without experience using the proven tools and processes that make collaboration effective.  This mindset can be changed by teaching and practicing collaboration methods that work. Your people have likely not yet experienced the slow-to-start and fast-to-finish effects of effective collaboration. Collaborative groups made up of representatives from throughout the organization can reach a consensus that is likely to be accepted and adopted by the rest of the organization resulting in less resistance and resentment for the necessary changes.

Sorry, this is a deal breaker. Research has shown conclusively that internal competition and effective collaboration cannot coexist. Collaboration requires coordination, cooperation, and open communication to be effective.  Competition is typically at odds with these things and promotes self-interest over group interests.