Motivation -- Understanding organizational collaboration requires thoughtful and flexible research strategies. This paper briefly addresses a newly developed framework for studying collaboration, and the implementation of that framework in a command and control domain. Results from the framework and lessons learned from studying collaboration in a field setting are discussed.Research approach -- Observations, interviews, and surveys were used to collect data. These methods were pulled from The Socio-technical Readiness Evaluation and Assessment Model (STREAM), which is a newly developed model that provides a framework for studying organizational collaboration barriers and facilitators. Two military organizations were examined in the context of the STREAM framework.Findings/Design -- Based on the data collected, several organizational collaboration barriers were identified including confusion about information flow, constant rotation of military personnel, and intense specialization in a particular job. The lessons learned from studying collaboration within an organization involved the ability to use different data collection methods to better understand the environment, the difficulty in developing collaboration metrics, and the complexity of organizational collaboration.Take away message -- Identifying and implementing metrics for collaboration, setting up the appropriate preliminary meetings, and leveraging triangulation methods proved beneficial for studying organizational collaboration.