It sucks when you’re playing a team sport and you get shut down trying to cut to get open, the other team scores on you, you throw into an interception or some mistake like that. Few of us enjoy admitting to faults, so we often make excuses that the problem was with your team mates, the sun, the equipment, or something out of your control.
When you run drills or exercises in practice, it’s another story. Effective ones are designed to focus on particular skills. A cutting drill, for example, focuses on cutting. You might have to run the same cut many times in a row against different team mates but everything else is the same. If you don’t get open, you can’t blame anyone else.
I ran a lot of drills when I played ultimate. It sucked when I would get shut down trying to get open in a drill because I couldn’t blame anyone. I didn’t get open and everyone knew it, but I learned to improve.
Organizations like businesses don’t run drills, only interactions that count, where people’s jobs and incomes depend on the outcome. Situations like that motivate people to blame others and not improve. I figure businesses expect schools to teach skills and responsibility useful in business, but schools often teach facts and analysis, not business practice.
That’s why when I coach I tend to give clients exercises. You have to do them to learn from them, but you learn to improve.