A Christmas Tale That Explains Process Behavior Charts

The Christmas Tale / Le Conte de Noël

Two years ago, I received an unexpected and incredibly specific Christmas gift from Charles Desneuf on LinkedIn. He wrote a PDF eBook about Process Behavior Charts… and Christmas!

This led to Charles collaborating with me on the English version of the eBook, which you can read or download in this post. I'm sure this appeals to the small subset of people who celebrate Christmas AND “Process Behavior Charts.”

For Christmas 2025: Enter to win a rare print edition of the book


How This Came to Be:

Charles tagged me in a LinkedIn post that was written in French. I don't read the language, but I could figure out what was happening in the book before going to Google Translate, thankfully.

His book is a Christmas tale that cleverly illustrates concepts related to “Process Behavior Charts.” Charles cited and mentioned my book Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More as a reference at the end of the book.

“Process Behavior Charts: Le Conte de Noël” — which translates to “The Christmas Tale.”


I reached out to Charles to see if we could work together to translate the book. He agreed!

This was the process (of course, we are going to talk about the process):

  • He sent me the text from the eBook
  • Charles gave me access to his Canva file, where he designed it
  • I created a copy of the file (just to be safe, to be sure I wasn't changing his French book file)
  • Copied and pasted the French text into Google Translate
  • Tweaked the English output of Google for readability and such
  • Checked with Charles on that language and a few other refinements.

After a number of iterations, we decided it was better to launch now and fix any problems rather than wait for perfection (and Christmas is approaching!!). We wouldn't want to publish the perfect eBook on December 28th!


English Version:

You can download the PDF or use the flip book reader below:


Merry Christmas! Let us know what you think about the Christmas tale by leaving a comment on the post, or by sharing on Linkedin.


French Version:

A version that's updated from what was originally on LinkedIn — Download PDF


Joyeux Noël!

You can learn more about Charles via his website. He helps “organizations deliver better software that their customers enjoy, faster & more safely.”


Learn More About Process Behavior Charts:

You can learn more via my blog posts or my book on the topic. Scroll down to see more posts.

Primary sources for these concepts include the books by the statistician Donald J. Wheeler.

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Cover of Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More by Mark Graban

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In Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More, I show how Process Behavior Charts help leaders tell signals from routine variation, so they spend less time explaining noise and more time improving the work. The foreword is by Donald J. Wheeler.

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Mark Graban
Mark Graban

Mark Graban helps leaders build workplaces where people speak up and improvement sticks, through Lean management, psychological safety, and better use of metrics. He is a keynote speaker, advisor, and host of the Lean Blog Interviews and My Favorite Mistake podcasts.

He is the author of The Mistakes That Make Us, Measures of Success, Lean Hospitals, and Healthcare Kaizen, and a three-time recipient of the Shingo Publication Award. His next book is The Silence Tax.

Mark is also a Senior Advisor to KaiNexus. Get his free ebooks.

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