Why is it qualified as Universal ? Because it is a very old idea (as mentioned in the article above) since for the greeks it encompasses how the Universe and all life evolve.
Let's take an example : intelligence. Here's an article that was published in scientific american that tried to define intelligence:
http://faculty.washington.edu/wcalvin/bk8/bk8ch2.htm
"IQ is certainly one fascinating aspect of intelligence, but it doesnât subsume the others; we shouldnât make the mistake of trying to reduce the subject of intelligence to a simple number on a rating scale. That would be like characterizing a football game in terms of one statistic, say the percent of passes completed.
Many complex behaviors in animals are innate: no learning is needed as theyâre wired in from birth). Such behaviors tend to be inflexible and often difficult to perform at will, such as sneezing and blushing. These stereotyped movement patterns exhibit no more insight or understanding of purpose than does a computer program. Theyâre a set piece.
Both innate and learned behaviors can be long and complex. Consider, for example, the performance of an idiot savant, a person with enormous detailed recall but poor ability to make good use of the recollected information in a new context, by breaking the pattern into meaningful parts and recombining them. Whale song and insect nest building may be equally unintelligent."
So intelligence could not be reduced either as a number or as a complex behavior or even an accumulation of knowledge, rather "intelligence is about the PROCESS of improvising and polishing on the timescale of thought and action."
PDCA or IDEA cycle is the PRACTICAL PROCESS to achieve that. Many people just recites mantra by setting goals and hoping that it will happen one day this is not the way to achieve the desired result with high probability. If you read the story how I improved myself in a matter that I hated
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19445 I can add that it is just this kind of process I followed - and that I always follow for many other things like trading also of course - and the point I would like to insist upon is this :
DON'T SET A GOAL, JUST CONCENTRATE ON THE PROCESS TO DO AS BEST AS YOU CAN, GIVE YOU TIME BECAUSE IF YOU DON'T YOU WILL BURN. INSTEAD OF GOALS SETTING RATHER CONSIDER STAGES AT SOME INTERVALS AND AT THE END OF EACH INTERVAL APPLY THE PDCA RULES that is to say CHECK AND ACT - to correct if you made a mistake.
If you don't set any goal you can go as far as you can - and sometimes be among the bests but that doesn't matter what matters is that you have put the best of yourself : you are working for you not for others - and that will never end whereas if you set a goal, if it is too easy you will stop to progress, if it is too high you will get discouraged.
Unhappily schools form almost only idiot savants since they will never learn you about PDCA. Learning how to learn is all about real intelligence.
Quote from harrytrader:
http://www.danielsloan.com/articlesframe.html
IDEA Cycle Articles
During the 1970s and 1980s an ageless improvement cycle made headlines under the banner, quality improvement.(1) Little was said about the thinker who invented it 2500 years ago. Less was said about the Bell Labs physicist, Walter Shewhart, whose 1932 text - Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product - rejuvenated the idea of quality.(2) In 1924 Shewhart invented the control chart that updated Aristotle's originial improvement cycle.
P.S.: I hope that after that you will try to cure your mental...
