Turning Resistance into Readiness: A Compliance Team’s Change Management Journey
Client: A global pharmaceutical company specialising in the development of innovative treatments for neurological and psychiatric conditions, with a multi-decade track record of improving outcomes for patients living with brain diseases.
Training format: Tailored classroom training
Location: Denmark
The Challenge
Their compliance team was preparing to roll out a new risk assessment tool across the organisation — a significant transition away from a long-established Excel-based process. While the new system represented a clear operational improvement, the team anticipated resistance from colleagues accustomed to existing ways of working.
The challenge was not technical. It was human. The Compliance team needed to understand how to generate genuine enthusiasm for the change, manage stakeholder concerns constructively, and build a shared plan for guiding the organisation through the transition. They came to ECCRT looking for practical tools and frameworks they could put to work immediately.
The Solution
ECCRT designed and delivered a two-day tailored Organisational Change Management training for nine Compliance professionals. Trainer Marc Devisch — an experienced change management facilitator and MBTI-certified coach — structured the programme around a hands-on, workshop-driven approach, deliberately stepping away from purely content-driven delivery in favour of applied learning.
Day 1 focused on the key dynamics of change: what it means, how people experience it, and what makes change initiatives succeed or fail. Participants explored the psychology of resistance, the importance of mindset, and stakeholder management — then immediately applied these concepts to their own change project through exercises built around three interconnected canvases: a storyboard, a switchboard, and an action board.
Before the training, each participant had prepared individually — writing their own account of the upcoming change and gathering objections they anticipated from colleagues. This groundwork gave the workshops real substance from the outset.
Day 2 shifted from understanding to planning. Working through seven leverage points for influencing mindset and behaviour — from building enthusiasm and articulating benefits, to enabling stakeholders and letting them experience the change firsthand — participants developed a concrete game plan for driving adoption within the organisation.
A notable aspect of the training was how the content applied equally to all participants, regardless of their direct involvement in the risk assessment project. Breakout sessions allowed individuals to anchor the frameworks to their own work, making the learning relevant across the group.
The Outcome
Feedback from participants was highly positive. The session was described as energising, and the hands-on approach was particularly valued — with participants noting that being challenged on their assumptions, including around the boundaries between regulatory requirements and behaviour change, prompted genuinely new thinking.
By the end of the two days, the Compliance team had moved from a general awareness of the challenge ahead to a shared understanding of the change they were leading — and a draft tactical game plan for how to approach it. One participant had already begun gathering baseline data on how colleagues experienced the current process, putting the training’s emphasis on measurable outcomes directly into practice.