They're looking down so they can't get a good game overview. They don't know if the player they pass to is going to be any better than they are at edging towards the goal and they're conscious of the girls with school scarves watching from the sidelines. When you're 14, life's a maze.

It's not so hot, either, when you're in your 40s and trying to get your head around how to pass the work to other team members in the newly formed 'Planning Team' to which you've been seconded. When you're used to doing things your own way, relying on your own skills and controlling how you do each step in the process, shifting to a collective, coordinated method of playing the game can lead to lots of own goals and the occasional ego injury.

Yet organisations everywhere are taking teams out to woodland areas for organised archery and 'adventurous' activities to build trust and promote cohesion. By evening most people get real at the bar and bond about their collective hope for as little change as possible, just more meetings and a more formalised routine.

Six months' time, they all agree, they'll be back to last week.

Sometimes the jobs we do are secondary to the performance we muster up so that managers, too blinded by strangulated management guff to see the wood for the trees, can feel secure.

Often the 'biggest asset' of the organisation is also the most easily manipulated, so when a new way to work is identified, the costly technology required, and logistical redevelopment associated are ignored and the bums are just moved to new seats.

One of the most studied aspects of innovative organisational climates is the team. It became fashionable to believe that putting people together is crucial for minds to synergise and spark, thus creativity would be germinated and novel ideas leading to better products and quality systems be born.

Or is it just like putting a gaggle of seven-year-olds into the bouncy castle and believing they'll emerge as bonded as the Von Trapps?

It may just be a case of lots of activity, no real interaction.

Research has shown that, although romantic notions about team working have led us to believe that teams are better, there is scant evidence that they actually achieve their optimum potential (productivity capacity of the most capable group member).

Individual output doesn't necessarily increase at all by working in a team, and there is a tendency to overlook the fact that some slackers lust after team structures so they can hide comfortably behind the doers.

The notional advantages of teams are often based on people's reported higher levels of satisfaction in teams, and therefore, by feeling happier . . . could it be because they are less exposed? . . . they kid themselves the work is better too; so improved outputs are perceptual rather than based on any real improvement in quality, hence the wobbly empirical data on team performance.

In 'Thoughts on the Romance of Teams', Natalie Allen and Canadian occupational psychologist Tracy Hecht say that organisational psychologists themselves are often too dazzled by the attractiveness of the cosy team concept to see their flaws within workplaces. Be judicious, they warn, when using a team approach to getting things done.

One of the major problems with changing groups of employees into team players is that they will play the part but not really feel the feeling. That's often because there is no real need for the team in the first place. In real teams, there is a common goal that can be reached only by the coordinated efforts of the collective.

This is not to say it will be easier or better for interdependence to exist, but that it is a prerequisite.

A team is not just a group of workers who happen to work on the same topic or share the same goal. A team is a group of people who must coordinate their efforts to reach their goal; it's an organism which has a lifespan and developmental path of its own. It has boundaries, limits, an internal dynamic.

The trajectory of any team from inception is from dependence on each other and on knowledge and skills around them, to independence, when each member stakes out his own space, specialisation, role, relationships and position relative to the others. And finally, to interdependence.

For those who still bring their washing home at 30, this might not be nice to hear, but if people remain in their dependent mindset, no matter how many teams you put them in, they won't benefit the team and may even usurp it.

If they remain merely independent players, some may head off, playing their own game and refusing to acknowledge the others, their roles and the existence of a unitary group. Set pieces that may lead to a better overall result get bypassed, often because there are too many individuals and no appreciation of interdependence. Proper coaching is needed at this stage of any team to consolidate the passing of the ball . . . who to pass to, when to pass, how to pass and, crucially, why passing is the essence of the game.

Drop-kicking team systems onto hierarchical organisational structures just to signal to staff, shareholders and stakeholders that the organisation is abreast of the latest in business administration mastery may well result in a few own goals and lots of clever footwork by individuals involved, aimed more at self-preservation than genuine team advancement.

There's nothing special about teams and, more often than not, they are misnomers for a motley crew of individuals working around a similar aim. Call a group a group, though, and leave the teams to the 10% of occasions when they're really required. And drop the archery.

Patricia Murray is an organisational and work psychologist