Change how a dozen employees work, delivering a short project or satisfy a few dozen clients are usually not the norm in medium to large corporations where everything is larger and more complex.
“1, 2, All” is a framework to think about this problem… first by piloting your ideas (1), refining them (2) and only then scaling after it builds the necessary reputation (N).
1 - Piloting
Its objective is to prove your idea is feasible at least in one “place” (could be team, area, business unit, client segment, month,… up to you) and learn how to mature it further.
Approval is “easier” since it requires a smaller budget and even retractors will say ok to distract or see you fail...
You will start to see who is who, with some people supporting you while others will make fancy excuses to not be involved or be the guinea pig of your pilot. Some people will also see potential and try to ride you while others will jump into anything senior management says, be careful with all.
Choosing how to run a pilot is a balance between a “representative” test and managing the risk of failing. If you shoot too low people will say "it worked for them but not for me" and if too high you might fail due to its complexity.
It's a learning opportunity for you too. You might have a good idea but not be ready to execute it e.g., your team doesn’t have the right expertise or sizing.
Try to get a sense of the challenges (time, resistance, technical complexity,...). A fake pilot will only build fake expectations.
Finally, lie to others but not to yourself, dont try to fake its results since failure later can be worse than in this stage.
2 - Refinement
Its objective is to mature your idea but also build a reputation to ease its roll out later.
Budget should be a small increment since you already did some investment on the pilot.
People will start to throw complains on why the pilot was not fully representative so you need to design it in a way it addresses all these comments (e.g., if you felt it wasn’t done fast enough, now it needs to be). Try to use sponsors from the pilot to "sell" how good it was (you can let them take part of the credit so it becomes a win-win).
If not on the pilot, this is the point where you need to bring a big reference case. Its good to start defining some metrics based on the learnings from the pilot (e.g., I commit to do this in this time, or lower the cost by x%), before it was just risky speculation.
You and your team need to solve all the issues from the pilot. Your team also needs to be sized and trained accordingly.
Go big…
All - Scaling
Its objective is not to roll out everywhere but to reach a certain “tipping point” where it becomes irreversible (e.g., because from a technical point of view cannot be shut down, a certain number of clients love it). Also, most ideas pay themselves without being 100% successful.
Approval should be a straight forward discussion if you had 2 success cases in your pocket. Not going ahead might still leave you in good standing since you proved it worked but others decided against it. You should be careful to not falling into the trap of living in pilots forever...
Some people might still be against your idea so ask yourself if they are part of the tipping point or not e.g., a country manager doesnt want to adopt your idea, will he/she be able to stand when all the other countries do?
Sequencing the roll out still needs some thinking as a bad example might still destroy your reputation, so its a good moment to slow down and capture low hanging fruits.
Your team needs to scale and mature as the idea rolls out.
Repeat...
Although simple, this framework can save you form the urge to aim too high or too fast when trying to scale in difficult settings. Piloting and maturing your ideas in the right place, with the right partners you trust that will later support you “selling” this to the rest of the organisation is key to success.