But everyone is already doing that _to some degree_. Everytime you do a mini refactoring, and be it just some code formatting, isn't strictly "working on the tasks assigned". Unless you define "working on the tasks assigned" a bit wider, which you should.
> And I can relate to this, because if I asked a dev on my team to work on building out a new report a user asked for and they respond they're going to fix technical debt instead, I wouldn't be happy.
But you, as the lead developer (or however you call it), should have some insight on the longer roadmap. And if you see that there will be a lot of new reports necessary in the future and the current reporting-system has a lot of tech debt, you should decide if this tech debt should be tackled and then align with your team to do it. And this is what my point is: you should not even have to tell your manager (unless he is the one to decide if the tech debt is tackled or not).
You should have all the necessary information and decision power regarding resources, priorities and technological&business strategy to make this decision. If you don't have that, your manager needs to have that _and_ needs to have the competence to make the decision about refactoring without having to rely on your or other technical people. If he can't do that (which I've seen is often the case) then this is where the problem lies: you are not empowered enough and you can't make the decision yourself, but you should be the one and not your manager.
In the same sense, you should not be the one to decide how your developer implements the new report. Maybe he will decide to pull in a new library, maybe not. Maybe not doing it would create some new tech debt or the other way around. But that should be his concern, not yours. Your job is to tell him what the priorities are and that's about it.
> Also we already know how this ad hoc approach to technical debt works in most organizations. You get 0% to work on technical debt.
If the decision makers don't care and you can't educate them about that you should be empowered, then I believe there is no point in fighting. It will just make everyone unhappy. Leave or create a lot of technical debt while moving fast until the company is stuck. Who knows, maybe that's better? The market will make the decision.