Maybe I trust people too much, but I feel people will find and make their own opportunities to collaborate if they feel like collaboration is required to complete their tasks.
If you're maximizing "opportunities to collaborate" you're probably taking their attention from their work unnecessarily.
> Maybe I trust people too much, but I feel people will find and make their own opportunities to collaborate if they feel like collaboration is required to complete their tasks.
I find this breaks down at larger companies. The problem is that people often do not understand when collaboration is required. This is usually not their fault. Someone up failed to communicate up or down the chain (either on the receiving or sending end).
I've watched groups reproduce each other's works, bungle rollouts, etc. based on this lack of communication. The cost of these miscommunications was sometimes greater than everyone's salary put together. A truly excellent culture of communication and collaboration reduces the frequency and severity of these events but there's no silver bullet.
Set 2 half days as office hours where people self organize and collaborate on whatever they need to solve. Poll the team to find what those 2 chunks of time are. 2 half days is arbitrary, the core idea would be that builders/makers have uninterrupted time to focus and build for the rest of the week.
If you're maximizing "opportunities to collaborate" you're probably taking their attention from their work unnecessarily.