Is this "tuning" typically done on the revenue side or the cost side? I'm surprised it's at all possible with proper revenue and cost recognition policies in place.
At NetApp there were other tools, service revenues, expenses, etc. One quarter the call went out for everyone to be sure they had expensed everything they had outstanding. Once the summer employee event shifted by a week. They would also do close the quarter incentive sales which could bring in just enough orders to keep it in line.
As far as I can tell this is something they teach in business school as part of your MBA training. It seems pretty universal. When things can't be managed that way, you get actual unexpected surprises, lay offs, or work furloughs, or perhaps you decide you aren't going to hire nearly as many next year so you trim all the contract staff.
Clearly people aren't as worried by over delivering as they are under delivering. As you can see from the Apple and Google earnings calls, a small miss negative can have an outsized impact on your stock price. But it is also important to not consistently have upside surprises as suddenly people start valuing the stock assuming an upside surprise.
Even developers do this, although most of us resent having to do it. You manage risk and tech debt by splitting high risk projects into many small pieces, and amortizing improvements across low-complexity features. The long and short lines are never more than an order of magnitude or so apart, even though it might take ten 'tasks' to equal one change that the customer will actually notice.