What is CoRT 

CORT is one of the best programs designed by Edward de Bono for teaching thinking skills. It addresses questions such as:

• How do you think?

• How do you innovate, both individually and as part of a group?

• How do you overcome bias?

• How do you turn your ideas into action?

• How do you set priorities?

• What creative techniques can be adopted?

The program is suitable for children and adults, employees and managers alike, and can be applied across a wide range of fields, including technical disciplines.

The name CORT was derived from the name of the center established to develop and promote the program:

Cognitive Research Trust (CoRT)

In Arabic: Cognitive Research Center.

The program helps students, teachers, employees, and managers move beyond conventional patterns of thinking and develop a deeper understanding of issues, while strengthening their ability to approach problems and solutions creatively.

The program is taught in approximately 30 countries worldwide, across different educational and professional levels, with an emphasis on developing the thinking capabilities of students, graduates, and managers.

Some universities that place a strong emphasis on education and cognitive development teach it as a two-year course.

The de Bono Center in Jordan also produced a version of the program specifically for children; however, this edition is currently unavailable.

Program Structure

The program consists of six modules/books/parts, each containing ten thinking tools, for a total of sixty thinking tools.

Each tool requires approximately 30 minutes to teach. Therefore, the entire program can be delivered by covering all 60 tools in approximately 30 hours, God willing.

Lesson Structure

Each lesson follows three steps:

1. Explanation of the tool

2. An example demonstrating its application

3. Three exercises for each tool

The six parts of the program are structured as follows:

Part One: Expanding the Perception Field

This part aims to deepen understanding of problems and their associated objectives, explore the available alternatives while taking different perspectives into consideration, and ultimately translate the thinking process into decisions that can be implemented in practice.

Part Two: Organization

In Part One, we generated a large number of ideas, alternatives, and plans. These now require the second fundamental pillar of management: organization.

Organization is the process of identifying the activities required to achieve the objectives a person has established, and structuring them in a way that makes execution easier within the required timeframe.

This is the simplest form of organization. In management science, however, organization involves several additional elements that ultimately contribute to achieving—often multiple—desired objectives.

These include:

• Understanding the reality and nature of things

• Analyzing the different elements involved

• Identifying the starting and ending points

• Determining which activities can be combined because of their interdependencies

• Establishing the appropriate sequence of activities

We encounter the consequences of poor organization frequently without necessarily recognizing them. For example, a government authority may pave a road before removing or relocating a metro line, only to remove the road surface afterward, carry out the metro work, and then repave the road again. This may result in failure, unnecessary cost, or both.

This is where one of the most important contemporary approaches emerged: Agile, which focuses on connecting work to objectives and achieving those objectives through consistent, equal time-boxes—such as one week, two weeks, or one month.

In other words, instead of treating the entire project or initiative as one large unit that ends at a single point in time, we divide its duration into smaller time-boxes and determine in advance what should be accomplished during each one. This reduces the risk of discovering failure only at the end of the project.

This section of CORT is divided into two groups:

1. Five tools for defining and understanding the dimensions of the problem

2. Five tools for developing a strategy to reach the solution

Part Three: Interaction

This part focuses on working within a team or with business partners, whether they agree or disagree with our opinions.

It explores how constructive interaction can be achieved through:

• Discussion

• Reasoning

• Evidence

• Evaluating the strength and validity of different forms of evidence

An interesting parallel can be found in Usul al-Fiqh (principles of Islamic jurisprudence), which developed sophisticated methods for evaluating and ranking evidence according to its level of authority and applicability.

Within a team, it is therefore important to distinguish between correct and incorrect assumptions, ideas, and arguments, and to use evidence and reasoning to evaluate and prioritize competing ideas.

Ancient philosophers made significant contributions to the development of logic. Muslim scholars subsequently made major contributions to the systematic study of the foundations and methodologies of different disciplines, including Usul al-Fiqh, Usul al-Sunnah, and Hadith methodology. This intellectual development is discussed, among other works, by Dr. Mustafa Abd al-Raziq in Tamheed li-Dirasat al-Falsafah al-Islamiyyah (Introduction to the Study of Islamic Philosophy).

This part supports the principles of collaborative learning and active learning.

Part Four: Creativity

This part focuses on tools that enable learners to break away from conventional thinking patterns and generate ideas and solutions beyond traditional approaches.

The objective is to encourage learners to challenge assumptions, explore unconventional possibilities, and develop creative approaches to solving problems.

Part Five: Information and Emotions

This part focuses on tools for collecting the information necessary to understand an idea or problem and evaluating the credibility and relevance of that information as evidence for decision-making.

It also recognizes the significant influence of emotions and personal preferences on decision-making.

Our natural inclinations toward certain things—such as love and dislike, preferences for particular colors, fear of certain situations, and other emotional responses—make individuals different from one another. These differences can lead people to make different choices even when presented with the same logical information.

Understanding the interaction between information, evidence, emotions, and reasoning therefore contributes to better decision-making.

Part Six: Action

This part represents the practical outcome of thinking.

It focuses on how to translate ideas and conclusions into real-world implementation, transforming thought into practical decisions, plans, and actions that can be executed.

CoRT Advantages

1. Simplicity

2. Practicality

3. Encouraging collaborative learning

4. Rejecting opinion bias and promoting a culture of diversity

5. Reducing bias

6. Elevating the quality of thinking

7. Accuracy in decision-making

8. Focus

9. Creativity

CoRT Disadvantages

1. Lack of internal organization—it is a framework, not a process.

2. Overlap / Interdependence.

3. The need for renewal using contemporary sciences.

4. Lack of operational clarity (the "how"), with an absence of well-defined output structures (work products) to assist those implementing the program.