Strategy is focus, which is about saying no. Management, particularly in the world of entrepreneurship and small business, boils down to knowing when and how to say no. On the surface, from the outside, that probably seems simple. But try it and it gets a lot more complex.

For example, how do you say no to a new idea without stifling the flow of other new ideas? How do you say no to a bright young enthusiastic person without dampening that enthusiasm? Saying no can be as hard as nails.

Still, you really have to be able to say no to manage a company. And not just to not-so-good ideas, but — and here’s where it really hurts — sometimes even to good ideas that just won’t fit into the space allotted. You need to say no to some things to have any shot at strategic focus. It blends in nicely with the principle of displacement, which is basically that everything you do rules out other things that you don’t do.

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So it turns out that Jenny whiteboard quitting was a hoax. The Jet Blue guy with the chute exit and the beer wasn’t. I posted about both of them here Wednesday. You can read in my post that I suspected Jenny was fiction, because I said so then, and I hedged my bets.

The two brothers who run thechive.com contrived the Jenny whiteboard story, hired an actress, scripted it, shot it, and put it on their site as a real thing. TechCrunch has all the details, with more on the actress and the brothers.

The Jet Blue guy, meanwhile, has been charged with a couple of felonies.

The coincidence of Jenny and Jet Blue together is a great example of stories: the power of stories, and the truth of stories.

William Blake wrote:

Anything which is possible to be believed is an of truth.

And Harvey Cox wrote:

All human beings have an innate need to hear and tell stories and to have a story to live by.

So I ask: don’t you think Jenny’s story, although it was contrived, had useful impact?  Wasn’t it contagious media at its best?

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This is a great example of how quickly business assumptions change, and how badly we can screw up just by assuming the status quo. I just read Coffee Shops are Taking Wireless Off the Menu. It reports how coffee shops are turning away from free wireless. It’s an interesting commentary on changing times, but, much more important, a really good business reminder. The LA Times reports:

Coffee shops were the retail pioneers of Wi-Fi, flipping the switch to lure customers. But now some owners are pulling the plug. They’re finding that Wi-Fi freeloaders who camp out all day nursing a single cup of coffee are a drain on the bottom line. Others want to preserve a friendly vibe and keep their establishments from turning into “Matrix”-like zombie shacks where people type and don’t talk.

That shift could gather steam now that free Wi-Fi is less of a perk after coffee giant Starbucks stopped charging for it last month.

Put yourself in the place of coffee shop owners.

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Do you want satisfaction after all the annoyance of spam?

I just finished clicking full pages of spam with one click, and then deleting all of them with a second click. The view below (warning: the subjects include stupid and offensive subjects) shows the page just for that satisfying click that sends them all to oblivion. Boy that’s a good feeling. Take that, spammers!

If you don’t have a spam filter, then you need one. My company uses Postini and I also use SpamArrest and MailWasher. I recommend all three of them. Anything to not see the spam.