At a "lower" level, I've done something a bit along those lines when starting at my last job: I picked a bunch of people from each team at the company and reach

At a "lower" level, I've done something a bit along those lines when starting at my last job: I picked a bunch of people from each team at the company and reached out to them to schedule a one-on-one about them, the way they see things, their experience so far, their team, and a short introduction on my part. It wasn't about trying to be ten steps ahead of anything or about taking any statement as absolute truth, but to understand different perspectives, to explain in quick and simple terms the reason why I had joined and in what ways I could help them, and to establish those contacts to facilitate future interactions. Every single discussion was worthwhile, because I understood a lot about the company really quickly (which helped me in my work) and every time an issue came up I could easily feel empowered to connect with those people and be put in touch with the right person, or to hear the non-official stuff that is sometimes harder to share across teams and therefore help the team with a little bit more personality than by slinging tickets across boards. Assuming you're not working in a place with an overwhelming amount of psychopaths (which I assume is a reasonable goal for the majority of people), I would say that caring about other people does pay back quickly and significantly (as shallow as that might sound).