More people voted for Barack Obama than any other candidate in American history and more money was raised by his campaign – over $650m – than has been raised for any other political campaign anywhere in the world. Those monumental successes were based on a simple belief contrary to perceived wisdom: that if the time is right – and the dedication, focus and strategy are true – anything is possible.

As we enter the year of our own defining election, then, the UK publication of The Audacity to Win – by Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe – couldn’t be better timed. Labour strategists would do well to heed Plouffe’s remarkably clearheaded and minutely-presented plans, which drove Obama’s seemingly irreversible momentum towards the White House, smashing the two most powerful institutions in US politics – the Clintons and the Republican party – in the process.

Here are eight lessons Labour managers can still learn from Plouffe’s inside story:

1. ‘We had our game plan and stuck to it. This was the hallmark of our campaign.’ The only way an insurgent could win in 2008 and overcome Hillary Clinton’s ‘inevitability’ was to get noticed as a credible and radical alternative early in the primary season and build momentum from there. Significant donors, the media and even Obama himself doubted this plan at times, and wanted to play a longer game. But Plouffe was adamant: ‘win in Iowa, or go home.’ That relentless focus on strategy – and rejecting the conventional narrative – underpinned Obama’s victory. Too often, Labour’s successes have been tactical – a good conference season, a couple of well-received campaigns – and its failures strategic, giving the sense that the party is tired and directionless.

2. ‘A staff is not an organization. A staff is there to support a local organisation.’ In other words, central HQ must provide the tools and assistance to empower the grassroots. When lines and literature were imposed by Victoria Street on the Norwich North byelection campaign, the outcome was disastrous. But the Glasgow North East campaign felt much more like a local campaign run by local people – with clear results.

3. ‘Nothing was more important to our success than local Iowans talking to local Iowans.’ Labour’s cabinet is not popular nationally, but our local campaigners and representatives in many cases remain assets. Local volunteers should highlight the work MPs have done locally and activists should tell their own stories of why they are volunteering for the party, rather than just trying to communicate a standard line.

4. ‘Work with every community, no matter how small.’ In the Obama campaign, everyone was welcome and everyone had a role. If the Labour party is to regain popularity, it must learn to open up and bring people into the organisation. Embracing people who are not members, but who share our values and want to campaign for the party, should be seen as a step forward, not backwards.

5. ‘Door-knocking is more effective than phone-calling.’ Even though effective phone banking was crucial for Obama’s success, it was never a substitute for speaking to people face to face. In the final days before the critical Iowa caucuses, Obama’s volunteers knocked on 50,000 doors. In the end, Plouffe said, it paid ‘huge dividends’.

6. ‘Metrics, metrics, metrics.’ Successes cannot be consolidated and compounded – or a successful strategy implemented – unless they are tracked. Obama’s organisers knew precisely the number of extra caucus-goers it would take to win each extra delegate. Similarly, CLPs should be constantly focusing on the number of voter promises they have, and on calibrating those contacts into manageable formats on which to build in the final weeks before the election.

7. ‘Don’t let your opponents define you.’ Each of the Obama campaign’s difficulties resulted from the campaign itself not knowing enough about the candidate and therefore not having rebuttals to attacks in place. Labour faces a similar problem. For 12 years, the party has allowed opposing groups to profligate myths, leading to a notion that Britain is ‘broken’. Labour must now redefine itself in response to those attacks.

8. Negative campaigning is a last resort to be deployed only by surrogates. Divisive mud-slinging smacks of the sort of politics that people are most disenchanted with. The Obama campaign was appealing because it sought to break from that cycle. The prime minister’s ‘playing fields of Eton’ line may have impressed Labour backbenchers – but the general public turned off in droves.

Labour has but a few short weeks to learn these lessons, which Obama himself said contributed to ‘the best political campaign in American history’. But time is of the essence; either we can look to Plouffe’s advice, or go home.

David Plouffe’s book, The Audacity to Win, is published by Viking