Have we gone overboard with the social workplace?

I’m a big believer in teamwork and togetherness when it comes to workplace productivity and even macroeconomic policy.

But some recent books and columns have me thinking our society, and our businesses, may be paying too little attention to the importance of solitude.

Yes, Twitter, Facebook and the like can be useful tools for collaborating and communicating. Companies are tapping such social networking technologies in intriguing ways. Retailer The Gap, for example, had employees post videos about their philanthropy projects online, where workers and the public voted on the most worthy one.

But there’s a cost to too much Twittering and YouTubing. New York Times columnist John Tierney recently interviewed Winifred Gallagher, author of the new book Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life.

Gallagher suggests starting the workday with a laser-like focus on your most important task for 90 minutes. It can take the brain 20 minutes to do the equivalent of rebooting after an interruption, Tierney writes.

“Multitasking is a myth,” Gallagher tells Tierney. “You cannot do two things at once. The mechanism of attention is selection: It’s either this or it’s that.”

David Brooks’ recent New York Times column about genius makes a related point: Excellence takes a ton of focused effort.

“The key factor separating geniuses from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark. It’s not I.Q., a generally bad predictor of success, even in realms like chess,” Brooks writes. “Instead, it’s deliberate practice. Top performers spend more hours (many more hours) rigorously practicing their craft.”

In his book Outliers last year, author Malcolm Gladwell helped popularize a key threshold: 10,000 hours of practice appear to be needed to achieve world-class expertise.

It’s too much to think all employees will produce on the level of Mozart or Tiger Woods if they just have more practice time in their cubicles. And a key to deliberate practice is an outside eye that can correct errors and offer suggestions.

Still, it stands to reason that time for focused work will boost skills and therefore productivity.

There’s a balance to be found here. My cubicle in a small, quiet office in San Francisco lacks the energetic pulse of bustling newsrooms, which helped propel my work at previous jobs. But my writing now benefits from minimal office distractions—a state I’ve sought to preserve online by severely limiting my use of Twitter and Facebook.

Amid the all the interactivity of instant messages, Tweets and e-mail alerts, employees—and ultimately employers—can benefit from quality quiet alone time.

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?

There’s an ongoing contest between the U.S. and European economic systems. And one of the key battlegrounds is nowhere near New York, Dallas, Brussels or Berlin. It’s China—that is to say, which side of the Atlantic is best able to work with and take advantage of Asia Pacific’s emerging economic powerhouse?

A recent press release from the other side of the Atlantic pond highlighted one way Europe is sowing the seeds for long-term success in China. It called for European managers to apply to the European Union-China “Managers Exchange and Training Programme,” a 10-month program that includes intercultural training, Chinese-language study, seminars, visits to Chinese companies and a three-month internship at a Chinese or European company in China.

METP is a four-year effort of the European Commission and the Chinese government aiming to serve a total of 200 managers from the European Union and 200 managers from China.

The program is tailored for frontline and midlevel managers. Applicants are supposed to have no or only very limited knowledge of Chinese language; be between 26 and 40 years of age; and have a minimum of five years of work experience.

The U.S., too, has been willing to have government play an active role when it comes to commerce with China. But U.S.-led business exchange efforts, such as the U.S.-China Oil and Gas Industry Forum seem geared to helping high-level executives make connections with Chinese counterparts.

I’m not aware of any U.S. government program akin to METP—one that encourages managers lower down in organizations to develop expertise and relationships in China. That expertise and those relationships can translate into concrete business deals as METP participants advance in their careers.

METP is of a piece with Europe’s focus on “sustainability” and long-term thinking. Both the U.S. and the European Union face widening trade deficits with China. And both would like to close those gaps by exporting more to China. Will the investment in budding managers in the METP program pay off for Europe down the line?