Lot's of great advice here. I'll boil it down to a couple of straightforward answers that may not be easy to read.
What Marketing Automation is: A Tool that, if leveraged appropriately, can dramatically impact your results and help you quantify marketing's contribution to the bottom line.
What Marketing Automation is Not:
1. It is not a crock pot for fix it and forget it marketing.
2. It will not solve content problems.
3. It will not fix dysfunctional relationships between sales and marketing.
4. It will not make your marketing magically delicious. i.e. if your campaigns aren't compelling, MA will not automatically make them successful.
Take Lauren and Mathew's advice and do the hard stuff. Really assess where you are in your modern marketing journey. Think about where you want to be in 3 months, 6 months, 1 year from now. Start having frank and honest discussions with your colleagues both inside and outside of your core marketing team. What does the CEO, CMO and CFO expect? What does sales expect? Define together what success looks like and then develop a road map for getting there. And, don't be afraid to seek professional help in getting there.