The American Management Association has regular email newsletters (with no RSS). The February Moving Ahead newsletter includes, How to Disagree with Your Boss—and Win. The article provides familiar advice on being disagreeable in an agreeable way.
A midlevel manager—let’s call her Laura—gets a directive from the boss that she thinks is ill-advised. Laura concludes that the plan won't achieve the desired results. It will increase costs or demoralize employees or cause customer dissatisfaction. Whatever the problem is, Laura is aware that because it’s the boss’s plan, she has to deal with the situation with a degree of sensitivity.
But the funny thing is the first line and my brain. I read that first line as "A medieval manager..." And then had to double check myself after reading the rest of the paragraph.