You hear it quite often in sports. When an individual or team is playing poorly, the advice is, “return to the fundamentals.”

Like any discipline, it starts with a foundation. When you struggle, you revisit the basics and build from there, just like you did when you first learned. With football, for instance, it’s about blocking and tackling, running and catching, often leading to the spectacular run or catch that changes the game.

For example, the catch by Odell Beckham, Jr., dubbed as #16 of the 100 greatest plays by NFL.com and described like this:

Sports announcers regularly use hyperbole to describe the great plays of athletes, but when NFL color analyst Cris Collinsworth described this Odell Beckham, Jr. catch as “absolutely impossible,” he wasn’t exaggerating. It happened on a Sunday night in November of 2014, in a game between the Giants and Cowboys at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. It was the first play of the second quarter, and the Giants, winning 7-3, had the ball at the Cowboys’ 43 on first down and 10. Off of play action, quarterback Eli Manning threw one deep down the right sideline to Beckham, Jr., who was being closely covered and fronted by a Dallas cornerback, Brandon Carr. At the 5, with the ball still coming down, Carr locked ahold of Beckham Jr.’s arm; as Carr fell to the turf and pass interference flags flew, Beckham, Jr. reached way, way back with his right hand and – while falling backward in mid-air – caught the ball and brought it into his chest with his momentum carrying him into the end zone for a touchdown. The Giants would lose the game and their record would drop to 3-8, but the Beckham play would be the highlight in an otherwise forgettable Giants season.

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It was a play that so captivated the football world that caused fellow wide receiver Jarvis Landry to exclaim, "He broke the internet!" Later—to the delight of many coaches and fans, particularly the young and hopeful—we would come to learn Beckham actually practiced this. He routinely did drills that prepared him to make such a spectacular catch. Younger, aspiring football players would soon latch on to this idea and, now, the one-handed catch is something football fans see quite routinely…Nonetheless still often spectacular.

It’s the pure definition of evolution: inspiration/conception, incubation, illumination (insight), evaluation, prototyping, refinement, and implementation. If the implementation is successful, it just might become a fundamental, like a group of kids practicing the Odell Beckham catch.

The importance of fundamentals is no less important in quality. Check out “Fundamentals Matter: Why GD&T Remains Essential in Modern Manufacturing” and “The Rise of Industry 4.0 and its Impact on Metrology” as well as everything else we have to offer in this month’s Quality.

Enjoy and thanks for reading!