A widow-maker position is a job that defeats two competent people in a row.
“Widow-maker” is the term that nineteenth-century New England shipbuilders used to describe a well-built new ship that still managed to have two fatal accidents in a row. Instead of attempting to fix the problems with the ship, they immediately broke it up to prevent another accident from occurring. In organizations, a widow-maker is a job that defeats two competent people in a row. It will almost certainly defeat a third one, no matter how competent. The only thing to do is to abolish the widow-maker position and restructure the work. Widow-makers typically appear when an organization experiences rapid growth or rapid change. I have since seen this phenomenon is a lot of organizations—for example, in a university that within ten years had moved from being primarily an undergraduate teaching institution to becoming a major research university. That killed off two excellent people who took on the presidency as it had been structured the old way, and by the way, any number of deans—again, these positions could be filled successfully only after the university had restructured itself thoroughly.
The “widow-maker” job is usually the result of accident. One person who somehow combined temperamental characteristics that are not usually found in one person created the job and acquitted himself or herself well. In other words, what looked like a logical job was an accident of personality rather than the result of a genuine function. But one cannot replace personality.
ACTION POINT: Is there a “widow-maker” position in your organization? Either restructure the position or eliminate it.
People Decisions (Corpedia Online Program)
Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices
* Source: The Daily Drucker by Peter F. Drucker