It is a delicate balance. You could as easily overwhelm a group of people with expectations of their desire to be involved as exclude them based on the false assumption of them wanting you to decide for them.
At any workplace we come together with persons having different expectations and experiences. We can only change by starting from where we are and learn from there. We wish to go forward but can't do any jumps over large gorges without the helt from others. If we are the one to help we can't just stand on the other side and yell. We need to come back and meet the persons we are helping where they are and join them there. In my organisation the teams are cross functional and co-located. They pull their work from a common backlog. So far so good, but how did they get there? How can teams be formed without trampling on someones feet and at the same time avoid leaving people behind?
We were making the change from having project teams to teams with area focus. While having the project based situation the teams were unable to help each other without extensive administration, due to having separate budgets per team. The change was also aiming to encourage the teams to take responsibility for life cycle maintenance of their part of the system. Doing that usually leads to a desire to learn even more and there you are, on the golden (brick) road to Mastery.
We wanted a lot out of the change and there were a lot if people wanting different things. Some dreamed of flexibility and being able to helt where needed. Some were hoping to be free of the administrative burden of the projects. Others dreamt of being able to dig deep inte their field of expertise. From my outside vantage point as a coach, I believed we had a good chance of accommodating, if not all, at least most of our dreamers.
Information and the invitation to be involved was first on our list. Information, we decided was best delivered by the teams managers. Everyone doesn't love the new freedom, The managers were there to guide. With an open invitation to be involved we avoided the potential problem with persons knowing more than us being overrun. We invited them to share and guide us in the transformation. Perhaps someone have done the same thing before in another organisation.
The ones that had no wish to be involved in the formation of the teams were not forced. They were asked to share what they would like to work with, and were suggested a team. Of course there were some constrains to take into account. The teams needed to have the right size and a healthy mix of everything available. In the rare case of individuals having a real problem with being on the same team, the managers conveniently knew about this and arranged accordingly.
The key is to have a clear enough view of what lays ahead, what's in the backlog. Based on that knowledge, people are able to form teams for building and handling the system. In addition to the backlog some constraints need to be agreed on. Team size, co-location, cross-functionality, are some examples.
