To be honest, for most low or moderately performing organisations, the best technique is just to not talk about it and just do it. So long as it's done silentl

To be honest, for most low or moderately performing organisations, the best technique is just to not talk about it and just do it. So long as it's done silently, blended in with other things, and cloaked under clever wording (e.g. "this blocks that other thing you want" rather than "this will improve the codebase"), things will go quite well. As soon as you speak to them as you would another engineer, you provide them material to use against you in prevention of you taking proper action.