Healthy Organisation

We Prefer Working Alone – COMMITMENT – 21

When people avoid collaboration, teams lose shared ownership, learning slows down, and results depend too much on individual effort.

View all cards

What this looks like in everyday work

Preferring to work alone doesn’t mean people dislike others. In many teams, individuals choose solo work because it feels faster, safer, or more controllable than collaboration.

• People solve problems individually instead of involving the team.
• Information stays in personal notes or inboxes, not shared spaces.
• Collaboration happens late, often only to “inform,” not to co-create.
• Meetings are seen as interruptions, not opportunities.
• Success is described in individual terms, not team outcomes.

Over time, teamwork becomes optional, not expected.

Why it happens

Preference for solo work usually develops as a response to past experiences, not because people reject teamwork by default.

• Low trust: people fear criticism or interference.
• Inefficient meetings: collaboration feels like wasted time.
• Unclear roles: teamwork creates confusion instead of clarity.
• Performance systems: rewards focus on individual results.
• Overload: collaborating feels slower under pressure.

When collaboration costs more energy than it saves, people naturally avoid it.

How it affects results

Teams that work in parallel instead of together struggle to scale and adapt.

• duplicated work and inconsistent solutions,
• knowledge silos and dependency on individuals,
• limited learning and innovation,
• weak shared ownership,
• reduced resilience when key people are absent.

How to reduce and overcome it

Collaboration improves when it is purposeful, structured, and clearly valuable.

1. Clarify when collaboration is required: not everything needs group work.
2. Design better meetings: focus on decisions and co-creation.
3. Create shared goals: make success collective, not individual.
4. Reduce friction: use simple tools for sharing and co-working.
5. Model collaboration: leaders collaborate visibly.

Practical tools (explained)

1) Collaboration trigger rule

Define clear moments when collaboration is mandatory (e.g., cross-team impact, customer-facing decisions, risk).

How to use it: write 3–5 triggers and make them visible to everyone.

2) Co-creation sessions

Replace long updates with short sessions focused on joint problem-solving.

How to use it: 60–90 minutes, clear problem statement, concrete output.

3) Shared workspace standard

Agree on where work-in-progress lives so collaboration is easy.

How to use it: one shared tool, one structure, one rule: “If it’s not there, it doesn’t exist.”

4) Team outcome review

Review results as a team, not as individuals.

How to use it: ask “What did we achieve together?” before “Who did what?”

Recommended links

• Google re:Work – team effectiveness
• Harvard Business Review – collaboration
• MindTools – improving teamwork
• Atlassian Team Playbook
• Poslovna Znanja – practical team workshops