The Ren Wu 壬 午 month pop quiz as you will recall featured this chart:

Tony Hayward, soon to be former BP CEO

The chart belongs to Tony Hayward, the CEO of BP (until October, following which he will be transferred to TNK-BP)

Almost all of you picked up the Tiger-Snake clash and there were some weird funky attempts to reconcile the Rooster with the Rat in the Luck Pillar etc. To be honest, the answer was a LOT SIMPLER.

Tiger  寅 (Yin) is the Hurting Officer Star. In 2010, Hurting Officer and Direct Resource are in conflict. This means, that as a result of something you say (Hurting Officer being an expressive star), you hurt your Goodwill and Reputation.Specifically what you say is not POLITICALLY CORRECT, tactless, or simply too blunt and honest.

This is what he said, that is now widely regarded as the statement that pretty much ruined his tenure as CEO:

“we’re sorry for the massive disruption it’s caused to their lives. There’s no one who wants this thing over more than I do, I’d like my life back“

With regards the effect of the Tiger on the Snake in his chart, yes, this obviously affects his Wealth Star BUT everyone has given this an extremely narrow interpretation. The common interpretation given in the answers was that he would either lose his job or lose a lot of money.

Well, he hasn’t actually lost his job since he is still working for BP but is now being tasked to handle TNK-BP, BP’s extremely lucrative joint-venture in Russia AND he has received a GBP 600,000 pension per annum along with a year’s salary. That is HARDLY in my view, a loss of money in any sense.

So, where did the interpretation go wrong?

Firstly, it is false to assume that just because the Wealth Star is affected, that the job is necessarily affected. This is because employment relates not just to the DW star, but also relates to the DO star. As we only have a partial chart, we cannot know if he actually has a DO Star in the Stem of the Hour or in the Branch of the Hour that is affected. But suffice to say that there is nothing here to suggest the Direct Officer Star is actually significantly affected. As such, I did not think he would lose his job, because there is nothing to suggest Direct Officer is affected.

I also did not think he would be financially affected simply because whilst there is a Punishment Relationship between the Geng Yin and the double Snakes in the Chart, there is no ROB WEALTH STAR in the equation. How to lose the Wealth if it is not robbed?

(there was also a dose of common sense involved here – I knew who he was and frankly, no multi-national organisation in the world fires a long-standing company man just because a bunch of Yanks are severely pissed off and he made a major public relationship gaffe. You punish the person yes, but you don’t CAN them. They are simply too valuable at that level, and if he was sacked, there would probably be plenty of companies out there willing to hire him just for the sake of his expertise in having been at the center of the storm in this issue. The point being CONTEXT MATTERS.)

Now, let’s talk about what the Tiger-Snake punishment *really* means.

Direct Wealth relates to not just money, but your chattels and the things you are responsible for. In this case, the entire company is his responsibility. The Punishment is a Hurting Officer Star affecting a Direct Wealth Star – in itself, these two Stars are somewhat contrary to each other because one is the star of extreme conservatism, and the other is the star of outrageousness. So here, we have the Hurting Officer Star affecting the Direct Wealth Star – the person is overly boastful, and somewhat cavalier when it comes to the things that are under his care or which are his responsibility. He assumes that he has everything under control because Hurting Officer is the star of great confidence.

The Wiki account of the Deepwater Horizon incident shows that Hayward obviously under-estimated the nature of the problem, and then after that consistently downplayed it. His cavalier attitude could be seen in how he decided to go and watch his sailboat race rather than at least PRETEND to give a damn about the birds that were dying in the Gulf of Mexico, or all the people whose livelihoods were affected by the spill and explosion.

But that is the nature of Jia Wood Hurting Officers – it is a supremely tactless Hurting Officer. All Hurting Officers are tactless and blunt but the Jia Wood Hurting Officer is THE most tactless and THE most blunt, and worst of all, the most oblivious to the fact that what is being said is just digging them into a deeper hole.  And in this case, Hayward’s tactlessness caused a fall from grace, but it did not cause him to lose his job. That is because Resource is affected and not officer, indicating a Reputation or Goodwill related problem, rather than an actual issue with employment.

Nice try to everyone who gave it a go but a bit of a miss.