One thing that I've experienced is making Friday a "non essential work" work day. Its a day to do small tasks that have piled up over the week, do some clean up

One thing that I've experienced is making Friday a "non essential work" work day. Its a day to do small tasks that have piled up over the week, do some clean up, and otherwise try and figure out what the next week looks like. What made this really work IMO is that if someone needed to sync on something or get a context download Fridays became the day to do it because no one would have an excuse to not do some knowledge sharing. Toss in grabbing lunch and coffee with other coworkers and it ends up being a great way to build company cohesion and foster cross-team/org relationships. And, if you decide to leave after lunch to play tennis no one is going to give you the side eye.