About Cedric Chin
Cedric Chin is a writer and former software operator who runs Commoncog, a publication about how to get good at business faster. Its premise is that business expertise can be learned more deliberately than most people assume, if you study how experienced operators actually think and test ideas in real companies rather than collecting frameworks.
Chin's early career was in the Singapore technology scene. As a student he started a university hackers' club in Singapore that still runs, and he was involved in early online publishing, launching Novelr.com and co-founding Pandamian. From late 2014 to the end of 2017 he helped build EPOS, a point-of-sale company serving Singapore and Vietnam, where he led engineering and which grew to $4.5 million in annual revenue in two years; the business was later acquired by Ant Financial. He then spent about two years working part time on marketing for Holistics, a business intelligence software company, and writes that a repositioning he led there in 2021 doubled its annual recurring revenue within eight months.
Commoncog began in 2018, originally as a content marketing experiment that turned into a blog about his own development as an operator. Over time it became a membership publication. Its two main approaches are what Chin calls the Calibration Case Method, sequences of business cases meant to train pattern recognition, and the slow publication of ideas that have been tested in practice, in his own businesses and in consulting work. The site states principles of disclosing results, writing to be useful and being honest about uncertainty.
Some of Chin's best-known work comes in long series. The Tacit Knowledge Series, begun in 2020, argues that much expertise cannot be written down and draws on naturalistic decision-making research to show how to learn it from experts. Becoming Data Driven, a multi-year series that grew out of work with former Amazon executives, explains how to use process behaviour charts and a weekly metrics review to understand what really drives a business.
What Cedric Chin is known for
- Founding and writing Commoncog
- The Tacit Knowledge Series on learning expert intuition
- The Becoming Data Driven series on statistical process control for business
- Applying naturalistic decision-making research to business expertise
Works by Cedric Chin
1 essay to practice
More notable works
The Tacit Knowledge Series (opens in a new tab)
Essay · 2020
A multi-part series arguing that expertise is mostly tacit and showing methods, drawn from naturalistic decision-making research, for extracting it from experts.
The opening essay of the tacit knowledge series, which makes the case that learning expert intuition matters more than drilling isolated skills.
A long synthesis of his data series that explains variation, XmR charts and the Amazon-style Weekly Business Review.
Commoncog (opens in a new tab)
Blog · 2018
His publication on accelerating business expertise through cases, research and ideas tested in practice.
Cedric Chin’s writing style
Chin specializes in finding actionable patterns in complex domains. His writing is characterized by careful analysis of success patterns and failure modes, often using detailed case studies and frameworks. He excels at making abstract principles concrete.
- Definitions up front
- Chin pins down terms before arguing about them. The tacit knowledge series begins by defining tacit knowledge as knowledge that cannot be fully captured in words, then narrows to the kind he cares about, expert intuition.
- Short punchy claims inside long essays
- His pieces run to thousands of words, but key ideas arrive as short sentences that a reader can hold onto, such as the line that the purpose of data is knowledge.
- Research brought into practice
- He summarizes academic work, from naturalistic decision making to Deming's statistics, and then asks what an operator should do differently on Monday.
- Concrete examples and cases
- Becoming Data Driven illustrates its claims with worked examples and real company histories, such as Deming-era manufacturing stories, so an abstract statistical method becomes something a reader can picture.
- Open about uncertainty
- He labels what he has tested and what he has not, reports results, and flags where his own understanding is still incomplete.
How to write like Cedric Chin
Write like Cedric Chin by treating every essay as a report on something you have tried to learn. Start by defining your key term precisely, then say why the usual advice on the topic is incomplete. Bring in a body of research, summarize it fairly, and translate it into what a practitioner would do differently. If you have tested the idea, say what happened; if you have not, say that too.
Organize long pieces with descriptive headings, number your steps when you describe a process, and break long explanations with a single short sentence that states the point. When a subject is too big for one post, plan a series and link the parts together, as Commoncog does with its tacit knowledge and data-driven sequences.
The quickest way to absorb these habits is to retype one of Cedric Chin’s essays above, word for word, then write a paragraph of your own in the same voice. New to this? Read what copywork is and how to do it.
Frequently asked questions about Cedric Chin
- Who is Cedric Chin?
- Cedric Chin is the founder and writer of Commoncog, a publication about accelerating business expertise. Before Commoncog he led engineering at EPOS, a point-of-sale company in Singapore and Vietnam, and later worked part time on marketing for the software company Holistics. He is known for long essay series on tacit knowledge and on becoming data driven.
- What is Commoncog?
- Commoncog is Cedric Chin's publication, started in 2018, about getting good at business faster. It publishes business cases arranged to build pattern recognition and essays on ideas that have been tested in real companies. It is funded mainly by a paid membership, with some consulting, and it avoids untested frameworks in favor of practical, evidence-based advice.
- What is tacit knowledge, according to Cedric Chin?
- In his Tacit Knowledge Series, Chin describes tacit knowledge as knowledge that cannot be captured through words alone, and focuses on expert intuition: the judgment experienced people use without being able to fully explain it. He argues this matters more than deliberate practice for most careers and describes interview and observation methods for drawing it out of experts.
- What is Cedric Chin's writing style?
- Chin writes long, carefully structured essays that define terms early, summarize research fairly and turn it into practical steps. He uses descriptive headings, numbered processes and short summary sentences to keep long arguments readable. He is open about what he has tested and what he has not, and he often builds ideas across a linked series rather than a single post.