Anything you undertake will have an associated set of basic principles and applications that govern that activity. Your job, as a novitiate, is to master those basics. If you are the teacher, manager or guide, your job is to provide a steady diet of the basics to those for whom you are responsible in a well-sequenced flow.
Once the neophyte has mastered the basics, he is then in position to develop his personal touch. He will have a solid foundation of success and confidence from which he can experiment and innovate. Absent this foundation in theory and practice, the novice will invariably develop habits that will limit his future growth.
The challenge of the teacher is to identify those core principles which converge in relation to the activity being taught and to articulate them in the way that they are most likely to be understood and implemented by the student. The student, on the other hand, must find the way in himself to “own” those fundamentals, to know them so well that they can be performed with little conscious thought.
Gregory Hake 
Once a foundation has been set either weakly or askew in some way, it is virtually impossible to improve or excel beyond a certain point. So often the slightly tedious matters related to ‘learning the basics’ are rushed through, and pretty soon the shaky foundation has been covered up, leaving a mediocre range of achievement as the only option to demolition!
LikeLike
Actually mastering the basics is quite simple. Where one has to be alert is after they master the basics and begin innovating and taking ownership in their own way. Often times their desire to innovate or to be different leads them into all kinds of trouble.
I have found over the years great relief in knowing and understanding what the basics for success were and when getting off track being able to go back to them.
LikeLike
Wash on, wash off! Excellent points.
LikeLike
Oftentimes people are so eager to start they want to skip the fundamentals but that can be a hard road. It’s like taking the test first then learning the lesson. The best teachers I’ve ever had seemed dogmatic at the time because they treated the basics as an unyielding principle…and thank heavens they did!
LikeLike
I was just talking about this very issue yesterday. You can’t really start putting your own spin on things or trying to improve a process until you really understand the basics. Once you do understand it, it really is your responsibility to try to improve it, but before the basics are mastered you are really more of a liability than a help.
LikeLike