Doc Rivers, coach of the National Basketball Association’s world champion Boston Celtics, has a prescription for people management that applies both on the court and in cubicles.

Last year, Rivers introduced his players to Ubuntu, an African concept that translates roughly as “I am because we are.”

This collectivist principle was key to the Celtics’ success last season. The team had just added stars Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen to join longtime Celtics leader Paul Pierce. For the “big three” to succeed, Rivers needed them to focus on team achievement rather than personal glory.

The Celtics—including other role players on the team—clearly bought into the philosophy. Garnett, Pierce and Allen all rose to the occasion at different moments during the championship series against the Los Angeles Lakers in June. And the Celtics derailed the Lakers and their superstar Kobe Bryant with a smothering, swarming defense.

None of the big three—or Rivers himself—had won an NBA championship before this year, despite long careers of individual accomplishments. The relief, joy and camaraderie they expressed after winning proved again the power and promise of true teamwork. “Anything is possible!” an emotional Garnett shouted.

The possibilities of teamwork, though, have been largely overlooked by companies in recent years. Corporate stars have been the focus. Companies have obsessed about identifying and grooming high-potential employees and paid close attention to pay schemes that reward top performers.

But separately shining stars fail to give the most brilliant business performance.

“It is not enough to have talent alone,” University of Michigan professor Dave Ulrich points out. You need “talent that works well together.”

That lesson can get lost in America, where we focus so much on personal feats and imagine ourselves to be rugged individuals triumphing alone against tough odds.

But perhaps this myth is wearing thin. The recent financial crisis and ongoing global warming threat remind us that we live in an interdependent, connected world.

A study published last year by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found increased public support for the social safety net and signs of growing
public concern about income inequality. Today, those communal impulses are growing stronger, I suspect, as jobs get cut, homes are foreclosed upon and our economy teeters.

Don’t be surprised if Rivers and the Celtics advance the cause of the collective again this year. Training camp opened last week, and Rivers kept giving out spoonfuls of Ubuntu-flavored medicine.

According to William Rhoden of The New York Times, Rivers asked a rookie to read a passage before practice last Thursday. Its theme was that the strength of a team is its players, and the strength of the player is the team.

“You can’t do it by yourself,” Rhoden quotes Rivers as saying. “Individuals don’t win, teams win.”

Are our companies—indeed our country and our world—finally ready to hear that wisdom?

Last year, members of Congress proposed a bill  called America’s Climate Security Act.

The comprehensive nature of the bill—which aims to head off environmental disaster through measures including a cap-and-trade scheme for greenhouse-gas emissions, mass-transit funding and a sustainable energy program—and its stability-focused title may be a guide for solving the economic crisis at hand.

Could we benefit from an “Economic Climate Security Act” that makes life less stormy for both Wall Street and workers?

The toppling of banks and freezing of credit in the past week has made it clearer than ever that today’s global finance system has become too precarious for its own good. But to get out of trouble, we may want to think about steadying not just the financial and credit markets, but the fortunes of workers as well.

A few years ago, any talk of reining in innovation or market freedoms might have been met with uniform ridicule as commerce-killing and communistic. But the financial meltdown of the past year or so has turned even the free-marketeers in the Bush administration into government activists. And months before Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Washington Mutual fell from grace, government finance officials from around the globe were calling for financial-market reform that “enhances stability, whilst retaining efficiency.”

A new era of tighter regulations on financial institutions seems to be on the horizon, with measures that likely will seek to curtail excessive risk-taking while preserving the vital activities of lending, borrowing and investing.

But why shouldn’t the reforms extend to American workers as well? They also face growing risk in the form of shaky retirement funds, increased health care costs, layoffs and an unstable standard of living.

Greater economic security for Americans in a global economy is not an easy achievement. There needs to be a vibrant business scene, along with long-term improvements in research and development. It also requires a stronger safety net made up of decent unemployment benefits, smart training programs, health insurance and sound retirement income.

These are tough, potentially expensive problems to tackle. But failing to solve both the labor and the capital sides of the puzzle not only will make life harder for workers, but likely undermine U.S. businesses in the long run.

Evidence is piling up that anxious workers make for less-productive employees. Half of the Americans polled in a recent survey said they are experiencing stress because of financial concerns, and 48 percent said that stress makes it hard for them to perform well on the job.

What’s more, workers double as consumers, who play a key role in generating economic growth. In a bad sign, consumer confidence remains near a 16-year low.

The business community has started taking Americans’ economic insecurity more seriously. And the so-far unsuccessful $700 billion bailout package includes some assistance to homeowners facing foreclosure. But the financial predicament of recent days is a perfect opportunity to consider a more comprehensive measure, one that at the very least would shore up America’s skimpy safety net.

We certainly shouldn’t eliminate individual accountability, risk or market freedoms. But to create an economy of shared, sustainable prosperity, it seems clear that both Wall Street and the workers who live off Main Street need more stability.

Isn’t it time for economic climate security?